• Development and Reproduction
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.167-180
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• 2015

Arsenic is a toxic metalloid that exists ubiquitously in the environment, and affects global health problems due to its carcinogenicity. In most populations, the main source of arsenic exposure is the drinking water. In drinking water, chronic exposure to arsenic is associated with increased risks of various cancers including those of skin, lung, bladder, and liver, as well as numerous other non-cancer diseases including gastrointestinal and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and neurologic and cognitive problems. Recent emerging evidences suggest that arsenic exposure affects the reproductive and developmental toxicity. Prenatal exposure to inorganic arsenic causes adverse pregnancy outcomes and children's health problems. Some epidemiological studies have reported that arsenic exposure induces premature delivery, spontaneous abortion, and stillbirth. In animal studies, inorganic arsenic also causes fetal malformation, growth retardation, and fetal death. These toxic effects depend on dose, route and gestation periods of arsenic exposure. In males, inorganic arsenic causes reproductive dysfunctions including reductions of the testis weights, accessory sex organs weights, and epididymal sperm counts. In addition, inorganic arsenic exposure also induces alterations of spermatogenesis, reductions of testosterone and gonadotrophins, and disruptions of steroidogenesis. However, the reproductive and developmental problems following arsenic exposure are poorly understood, and the molecular mechanism of arsenic-induced reproductive toxicity remains unclear. Thus, we further investigated several possible mechanisms underlying arsenic-induced reproductive toxicity.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.478-483
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• 2019

The use of fermented soy curd as a functional substance has been actively studied due to the anti-inflammatory and antiallergic activity of soybean protein hydrolyzate by enzymes of lactic acid bacteria. The present study investigated the potential of soy curd as a treatment for atopic dermatitis (AD). Pediococcus inopinatus Y2 (P. inopinatus Y2) lactic acid bacteria were inoculated into soy milk and fermented ($30^{\circ}C$, 24 hr). Changes in body weights, ear thicknesses, IgE concentrations, and weights of immune organs in ICR female mice were quantified. Moderate weight gain occurred in most of the groups. The ear thickness was lowest in the untreated group (no group), and it was allergic and thickened in the phthalic anhydride (PA) treatment group. Based on visual observations, as compared with the skin condition of the PA-induced AD group, the skin condition of the animals in the fermented soy curd (FSC) group was improved. Therefore, FSC by lactic acid bacteria seemed to improve AD. Based on the comparison of the weights of the spleen, thymus, and lymph nodes, as well as the results of the IgE analysis, soy milk, in addition to FSC, had a therapeutic effect. However, the antiallergy effects of FSC in terms of AD were far superior to those of soy milk. These results indicated that FSC can be used as a treatment for AD.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.13 no.1_2
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• pp.175-182
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• 1997

LBD-001, a recombinant human interferon $\gamma$ produced by genetically engineered yeast as a host system, was intravenously administered to pregnant female rats (Sprague-Dawley) from day 17 of gestation to day 21 of lactation at dose levels.of $0.35 \times 10^6$, $0.69 \times 10^6$, and $1.38 \times 10^6$ I.U./kg/day. In vasopressin-treated group, vasopressin (5 I.U./kg/day) was intravenously injected only for 5 days of perinatal period. (1) No signicant changes by the treatment of LBD-001 were observed in the body weights, food and water consumption, feeding and nurshing behaviors, and the weights of main organs of mother rats. In vasopressin-treated group, no significant changes were observed except the decrease in the food consumption on day 18 of gestation and one case of abnormal offspring with bleeding spots on the skin. (2) No significant changes in the body weights, survival rates, locomotor activity, emotional development. and the motor coordination of offsprings (F1) by the treatment of LBD-001 were observed except the fact that increase of ambulation in the female offsprings of LBD-001 ($0.69 \times 10^6$ or $1.38 \times 10^6$ I.U./kg/day)-treated groups and the increase of rearing in the males of LBD-($1.38 \times 10^6$ I.U./kg/day)-treated group, and the increase of the weight of liver and ovaries in the female offsprings in the LBD-001 ($1.38 \times 10^6$ I.U./kg/day)-treated group were observed. Altogether, the results show that LBD-001 at the dose of $1.38 \times 10^6$ I.U./kg/day or less does not significantly affect the mother rats and their offsprings (F1) except the minor influences when treated during the perinatal and postnatal period.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.153-158
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• 2004

With considerable development of comfortable and functional clothing in recent years, we need to evaluate the effects of garment pressure in daily wear on each parts of human body because the garment pressure is important to design the clothing. This study was designed to examine the effects of body postures on garment pressure on each parts of human body in the actual clothing conditions. All the data were collected from 50 volunteered subjects. The Garment pressure was measured in lune and December with 8 points CPMS clothing pressure system from scapular, upper am, elbow, under arm, front waist line, side waist line, abdomen, crista ilica, upper hip, middle hip, front thigh, back thigh, front knee and back knee. The postures of subjects were controlled with 3 positions such as standing (posture 1), sitting on the chair (posture 2), and sitting on the floor (posture 3) during measurement of clothing pressure. Clothing weights were more in men than in woman. It showed that clothing weights had no effects on the garment pressure. In this study, however, just the garment pressures on scapular and top of the hip increased significantly by clothing weight (p<. 05). Clothing horizontally pressed on scapular and top of hip but not on other parts. When subjects stood up, the garment pressure was the highest on the side waist. Especially, clothing pressure on the front waist point was lower than that of the left side waist. On the upper parts of the human body, the garment pressure of left side waist was the highest, and followed by front waist, crista ilica, and abdomen in order. When subjects were sitting on the chair, the garment pressure on the lower parts of the human body was the highest on the top of hip. When the subjects were sitting on the chair or on the floor, the surface area on their skin of hip and waist parts increased by postures. In addition, it showed that men felt more comfortable than women on higher clothing pressure level.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.768-775
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• 2005

For sign languages are main communication means among hearing-impaired people, there are communication difficulties between speaking-oriented people and sign-language-oriented people. Automated sign-language recognition may resolve these communication problems. In sign languages, finger spelling is used to spell names and words that are not listed in the dictionary. There have been research activities for gesture and posture recognition using glove-based devices. However, these devices are often expensive, cumbersome, and inadequate for recognizing elaborate finger spelling. Use of colored patches or gloves also cause uneasiness. In this paper, a vision-based finger spelling recognition system is introduced. In our method, captured hand region images were separated from the background using a skin detection algorithm assuming that there are no skin-colored objects in the background. Then, hand postures were recognized using a two-dimensional grid analysis method. Our recognition system is not sensitive to the size or the rotation of the input posture images. By optimizing the weights of the posture features using a genetic algorithm, our system achieved high accuracy that matches other systems using devices or colored gloves. We applied our posture recognition system for detecting Korean Sign Language, achieving better than $93\%$ accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.611-626
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• 2004

On the basis of a structural analysis of radial gate (i.e. Tainter gate), the current paper focuses on weight minimization according to the location of the arms on a radial gate. In spite of its economical significance, there are hardly any previous studies on the optimum design of radial gate. Accordingly, the present study identifies the optimum position of the support point for a radial gate that guarantees the minimum weight satisfying the strength constraint conditions. This study also identifies the optimum position for 2 or 3 radial arms with a convex cylindrical skin plate relative to a given radius of the skin plate curvature, pivot point, water depth, ice pressure, etc. These optimum designs are then compared with previously constructed radial gates. Local genetic and hybrid-type genetic algorithms are used as the optimum tools to reduce the computing time and enhance the accuracy. The results indicate that the weights of the optimized radial gates are appreciably lower than those of previously constructed gates.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.759-779
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• 2023

The paper proposes two hybrid metaheuristic optimization and artificial neural network (ANN) methods for the close prediction of the ultimate axial compressive capacity of concentrically loaded concrete filled double skin steel tube (CFDST) columns. Two metaheuristic optimization, namely genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), approaches enable the dynamic training architecture underlying an ANN model by optimizing the number and sizes of hidden layers as well as the weights and biases of the neurons, simultaneously. The former is termed as GA-ANN, and the latter as PSO-ANN. These techniques utilize the gradient-based optimization with Bayesian regularization that enhances the optimization process. The proposed GA-ANN and PSO-ANN methods construct the predictive ANNs from 125 available experimental datasets and present the superior performance over standard ANNs. Both the hybrid GA-ANN and PSO-ANN methods are encoded within a user-friendly graphical interface that can reliably map out the accurate ultimate axial compressive capacity of CFDST columns with various geometry and material parameters.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.377-382
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• 2011

This test was performed to evaluate the acute oral toxicity and skin irritation of Lamia-Kill$^{(R)}$, disinfectant, containing 20% benzalkonium chloride and 10% citric acid. In acute oral toxicity, Lamia-Kill$^{(R)}$ was orally administered at dose levels of 2,000, 1,000, 500, 250 and 0 mg/kg body weight. After single oral administration to both sexes of SD rats, the rats were observed for 14 days. In primary skin irritation test, New Zealand white rabbits were dermally treated with Lamia-Kill$^{(R)}$ for 24 hr and observed for 3 days. All rats treated with Lamia-Kill$^{(R)}$ were induced no toxic signs in mortalities, clinical findings, body weights and gross findings. Also, the disinfectant did not induce any adverse reactions such as erythema and edema on intact skin sites for the most part rabbits, but on abraded skin sites, some rabbits showed very slight erythema on 24 hr after topical application. With the results of this study, Lamia-Kill$^{(R)}$ have no effect on acute toxicity and side effect in SD rats and was classified as a practically non-irritating material based on the score 0.50 of primary irritation index.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.183-195
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Ondol on the bedclimate, microclimate and physiological responses of occupants. Four healthy female subjects slept for seven hours in thermal environment of detached house and apartment respectively. Their bedclimate, microclimate, skin temperature, weight loss of body, weight of bedcloth and sleepwear, body movement and subjective sensation were measureed for this study. The results were as follows; The differences of bedclimate, microclimate, skin temperature were significant according to season and residence styles. The occupants of the detached house showed higher temperature and humidity inside quilt and clothes than those of the apartment did on apartment environment. The occupants of the detached house showed higher weight losses of body, heavier weights of quilt than those of the apartment did on apartment environment in the spring, autumn and winter, lower weight losses of mattress in the autumn and winter. The occupants of the detached house moved more than those of the apartment on apartment environment when sleeping. The occupants of the detached house felt higher thermal sensation and lower humidity sensation than those of the apartment did. The occupants of the detached house felt more comfortable than those of the apartment on detached house environment, while the occupants of the apartment felt more comfortable than those of the detached house on apartment environment. The thermal environments of the apartment and the detached house had an effect on the bedclimates, microclimates of occupants and therefore the physiological responses such as skin temperature, rectal temperature, weight loss of body, perspiration and subjective sensation are different during sleeping according to their residential styles on the same environment.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2002

Allergic contact dermatitis (skin sensitization) may be caused by a wide variety of chemicals. A murine local lymph node assay (LLNA) has been developed as an alternative to guinea pig models for assessing the contact sensitization potential of chemical. This study was carried out to evaluate the skin sensitization potential for chemicals in Balb/c mice by LLNA. Contact allergen, dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB), respiratory allergen, toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and a weak allergen, $\alpha$-hexlycinnamaldehyde (HCA) were wed as positive chemicals and irritant, sodium lauryl sulfate(SLS) also wed as a reference chemical in this study. The weights of lymph node in the mice treated with DNCB, TDI, and HCA were increased compared to vehicle control. There was a significant increase in lymph node weight of mice treated with high concentration of SLS compared to vehicle control. The stimulation index (SI) of Lymph node cell in the mice treated with DNCB, TDI, and HCA revealed over three-fold increase compared to vehicle control by $3^H$-thymidine uptake. All allergens correctly identified in this LLNA study wing Balb/c mice. These results suggest that LLNA wing Balb/c mice could be a useful method for screening the allergenic potential of chemicals. The expression of IL-2 mRNA was slightly increased in draining auricular lymph node cell of the mice treated with TDI and HCA by RT-PCR. However the IL-2 levels in DNCB and SLS of treated animals were not significantly changed.