• Asian Spine Journal
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.973-980
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• 2018

Study Design: Retrospective review. Purpose: To identify the trends in stimulator use, pair those trends with various grafting materials, and determine the influence of stimulators on the risk of revision surgery. Overview of Literature: A large number of studies has reported beneficial effects of electromagnetic energy in healing long bone fractures. However, there are few clinical studies regarding the use of electrical stimulators in spinal fusion. Methods: We used insurance billing codes to identify patients with lumbar disc degeneration who underwent anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF). Comparisons between patients who did and did not receive electrical stimulators following surgery were performed using logistic regression analysis, chi-square test, and odds ratio (OR) analysis. Results: Approximately 19% of the patients (495/2,613) received external stimulators following ALIF surgery. There was a slight increase in stimulator use from 2008 to 2014 (multi-level $R^2=0.08$, single-level $R^2=0.05$). Patients who underwent multi-level procedures were more likely to receive stimulators than patients who underwent single-level procedures (p<0.05; OR, 3.72; 95% confidence interval, 3.02-4.57). Grafting options associated with most frequent stimulator use were bone marrow aspirates (BMA) plus autograft or allograft for single-level and allograft alone for multi-level procedures. In both cohorts, patients treated with bone morphogenetic proteins were least likely to receive electrical stimulators (p<0.05). Patients who received stimulation generally had higher reimbursements. Concurrent posterior lumbar fusion (PLF) (ALIF+PLF) increased the likelihood of receiving stimulators (p<0.05). Patients who received electrical stimulators had similar revision rates as those who did not receive stimulation (p>0.05), except those in the multilevel ALIF+PLF cohort, wherein the patients who underwent stimulation had higher rates of revision surgery. Conclusions: Concurrent PLF or multi-level procedures increased patients' likelihood of receiving stimulators, however, the presence of comorbidities did not. Patients who received BMA plus autograft or allograft were more likely to receive stimulation. Patients with and without bone stimulators had similar rates of revision surgery.

• BMB Reports
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.385-389
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• 1997

Many cell types are known to stimulate $CD8^+$ T cells in allogeneic recognition such as mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR). Whereas dendritic cells are most potent among them. T cells are usually considered very poor in stimulating $CD8^+$ T cells although there are some tumor cells that are weakly stimulatory. T cells, as a stimulator, cultured in the presence of concanavalin A that were otherwise nonstimulatory to $CD8^+$ T cells appeared to stimulate $CD8^+$ T cells strongly when they were pretreated with neuraminidase. The enhancement of MLR by neuraminidase could be achieved by treating either the stimulators or responders with neuraminidase. Removal of negatively-charged sialic acid moieties from the cell surface, which reduced electrostatic repulsion between responders and stimulators to give better cell-cell contact might be responsible for the enhanced MLR. In addition, neuraminidase treatment also appeared to deliver activation signal to responding T cells since it could activate $CD8^+$ T cells in synergy with phorbol myristate acetate. The maximal responses were observed when both responders and stimulators were treated with neuraminidase.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.173-175
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• 2018

Stem cuttings of three Rubus species native to Korea were treated by two commercial root stimulation formula for propagation. Differences among the species was obvious, toot was induced relatively easily on R. hongnoensis. Fifty percent of stem rooted without any treatment on this species and two stimulators was effective to increase the root induction. On the other hand, two other species, R. schizostylus and R. ribisoideus, had very low percent of rooting. Treatment using root stimulators was effective but still lower than that of R. hongnoensis. Root induction was not influence by the medium that resulted no differences between two media.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.39-50
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• 2005

The purpose of this research was to investigate the impression dimension and to elucidate the image perception depending on the tone of the Korean jacket and Korean skirt using the tone-on-tone coloration. As stimulators, the became same color by making the skirt and jacket red, yellow, and green at the same time. After the skirt and jacket became four kinds of tones, vivid, light, dull, and dark by altering value and fuing chroma in the assembled color, these tone-on-tone coloration stimulators $48(3\times4\times4)$ were used for the investigation of this study. Impression factor of the stimulus consisted of the 5 different dimensions(youthfulness and activity, attractiveness, gracefulness, concentration of attention, tenderness). Among these factors, youthfulness and activity, attractiveness were proved to be more important. In the tone-on-tone coloration of a Korean skirt and a Korean jacket, each dimensional image was affected by the character of color, also the evaluation of countenance showed the meaningful difference depending on tone. Thus, we can comprehend that the influence of tone as well as color affects the evaluation of an image.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.265-273
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• 2018

Direct numerical and large eddy simulations of transitional flows around studs installed on flat plate and bulbous bow have been performed to investigate an effectiveness of turbulence stimulators on laminar-to-turbulence transition at a very low speed. The flow velocity was determined to be 0.366m/s corresponding to 4 knots of full-scale ship speed when the objective ship was Kriso container ship. The spatial evolution of skin friction coefficient disclosed that a fully development of turbulence was observed behind the second stud installed on flat plate while a rapid transition from laminar to turbulence gave rise to the fully development of turbulence behind the first stud installed on bulbous bow. A comparison of streamwise mean velocity profiles showed that the viscous sublayer and log-layer were in good agreement with previous results although the friction velocity of Smagrosinsky sub-grid scale model was about 10% larger than that of direct numerical simulation. While the turbulence intensities of bulbous bow was similar to those of flat plate in inner region, larger intensities of turbulence were observed in outer region of bulbous bow than those of flat plate.

• Integrative Medicine Research
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.195-219
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• 2015

Acupuncture therapy has been proved to be effective for diverse diseases, symptoms, and conditions in numerous clinical trials. The growing popularity of acupuncture therapy has triggered the development of modern acupuncture-like stimulation devices (ASDs), which are equivalent or superior to manual acupuncture with respect to safety, decreased risk of infection, and facilitation of clinical trials. Here, we aim to summarize the research on modern ASDs, with a focus on featured devices undergoing active research and their effectiveness and target symptoms, along with annual publication rates. We searched the popular electronic databases Medline, PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Web of Science, and analyzed English-language studies on humans. Thereby, a total of 728 studies were identified, of which 195 studies met our inclusion criteria. Electrical stimulators were found to be the earliest and most widely studied devices (133 articles), followed by laser (44 articles), magnetic (16 articles), and ultrasound (2 articles) stimulators. A total of 114 studies used randomized controlled trials, and 109 studies reported therapeutic benefits. The majority of the studies (32%) focused on analgesia and pain-relief effects, followed by effects on brain activity (16%). All types of the reviewed ASDs were associated with increasing annual publication trends; specifically, the annual growth in publications regarding noninvasive stimulation methods was more rapid than that regarding invasive methods. Based on this observation, we anticipate that the noninvasive or minimally invasive ASDs will become more popular in acupuncture therapy.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2008

Purpose: Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a group of proteins that are activated when cells are exposed to a variety of environmental stresses, such as infection, inflammation, exposure to toxins, starvation, hypoxia, brain injury, or water deprivation. The activation of HSPs by environmental stress plays a key role in signal transduction, including cytoprotection, molecular chaperone, anti-apoptotic effect, and anti-aging effects. However, the precise mechanism for the action of small HSPs, such as HSP27 and mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs: extracellular-regulated protein kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2), p38MAPK, stress-activated protein kinase/c-Jun N-terminal kinase (SAPK/JNK), is not completely understood, particularly in application of cell stimulators including platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), angiotensin II (AngII), tumor necrosis factor $\alpha$ (TNF$\alpha$), and $H_2O_2$. This study examined the relationship between stimulators-induced enzymatic activity of HSP27 and MAPKs from rat smooth and skeletal muscles. Methods: 2-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionizationtime-of-flight/time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF/TOF) analysis were used to identify HSP27 from the intact vascular smooth and skeletal muscles. Three isoforms of HSP27 were detected on silver-stained gels of the whole protein extracts from the rat aortic smooth and skeletal muscle strips. Results: The expression of PDGF, AngII, TNF$\alpha$, and $H_2O_2$-induced activation of HSP27, p38MAPK, ERK1/2, and SAPK/JNK was higher in the smooth muscle cells than the control. SB203580 (30${\mu}$M), a p38MAPK inhibitor, increased the level of HSP27 phosphorylation induced by stimulators in smooth muscle cells. Furthermore, the age-related and starvation-induced activation of HSP27 was higher in skeletal muscle cells (L6 myoblast cell lines) and muscle strips than the control. Conclusion: These results suggest, in part, that the activity of HSP27 and MAPKs affect stressors, such as PDGF, AngII, TNF$\alpha$, $H_2O_2$, and starvation in rat smooth and skeletal muscles. However, more systemic research will be needed into physical therapy, including thermotherapy, electrotherapy, radiotherapy and others.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.275-281
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• 2016

Perilla frutescens was empirically used for controlling airway inflammatory diseases in folk medicine. We investigated whether caffeic acid, myristicin and rosemarinic acid derived from Perilla frutescens significantly affect the gene expression and production of mucin from airway epithelial cells. Confluent NCI-H292 cells were pretreated with caffeic acid, myristicin or rosemarinic acid for 30 min and then stimulated with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) for 24 h. The MUC5AC mucin gene expression and production were measured by reverse transcription - polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively. Additionally, we examined whether caffeic acid, myristicin or rosemarinic acid affects MUC5AC mucin production indued by epidermal growth factor (EGF) and tumor necrosis $factor-{\alpha}$ ($TNF-{\alpha}$), the other two stimulators of production of airway mucin. The results were as follows: (1) Caffeic acid, myristicin and rosemarinic acid inhibited the gene expression and production of MUC5AC mucin induced by PMA from NCI-H292 cells, respectively; (2) Among the three compounds derived from Perilla frutescens, only rosemarinic acid inhibited the production of MUC5AC mucin induced by EGF or $TNF-{\alpha}$, the other two stimulators of production of airway mucin. These results suggest that rosemarinic acid derived from Perilla frutescens can regulate the production and gene expression of mucin, by directly acting on airway epithelial cells and, at least in part, explains the traditional use of Perilla frutescens as remedies for diverse inflammatory pulmonary diseases.

• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.95-109
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• 1996

This work was carried out to investigate the functional heterogeneity of peripheral blood lymphocytes(PBLs) in carp, Cyprinus carpio. PHA, Con A, LPS and BCG were injected intraperitoneally into carp to determine the blastogenic response and rosette formation activity. In each group of fish treated with stimulators, the cell numbers and DNA contents of lymphocytes were higher than those of untreated control group and reached the highest level between 1 week and 2 weeks after injection with mitogens. These results showed that BCG and Con A were strong stimulators of proliferation compared to PHA and LPS. However, PHA-treated fish twice showed the highest rosette formation response among the consecutive stimulations with the same mitogen. Alase, the results on consecutive mitogen stimulation revealed that carps reinjected by different mitogens led to an increased stimulation higher than the one reinjected after 1 week with same mitogen. It seems that different mitogens may stimulate different cell populations and implies functionally separated subpopulations of lymphocytes in carp.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.236-245
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• 2021

In this study, direct numerical and large eddy simulations of transitional flows around studs were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of turbulence stimulators at very low speeds for the minimum propulsion power condition of four knots. For simplicity, the studs were assumed to be installed on a flat plate, while the wake was observed up to 0.23 m downstream behind the second stud. For applicability to a model ship, we also studied the flow characteristics behind the first and second studs installed on a curved plate, which was designed to describe the geometry of a bulbous bow. A laminar-to-turbulent transition was observed in the wake at Re_D ≥ 921 (U_∞≥0.290 m/s), and the wall shear stress at Re_D = 1162 (U_∞ = 0.366 m/s) in the second wake was similar to that of the fully developed turbulent boundary layer after a laminar-to-turbulent transition in the first wake. At Re_D = 581 (U_∞ = 0.183 m/s), no turbulence was stimulated in the wake behind the first and second studs on the flat plate, while a cluster of vortical structures was observed in the first wake over the curved plate. However, a cluster of vortical structures was revealed to be generated by the reattachment process of the separated shear layer, which was disturbed by the first stud rather than directly initiated by the first stud. It was quite different from a typical process of transition, which was observed at relatively high Re_D that the spanwise scope of the turbulent vortical structures expanded gradually as it went downstream.