• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.104-109
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• 1998

Purpose : The proliferative nuclear antigen Ki-67, present in all cell cycle phases except G0, is a useful marker for the detection of proliferative cells in vivo. MIB I has been found to recognize an antigen in formalin-fixed and wax-embedded material. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of MIB-1 expression as a marker of representing the status of mesangial cell proliferation in renal tissues. Methods : Immunohistochemical staining for Ki-67 Ag using monoclonal antibody MIB-1 (Immunotech,505) were performed in 41 renal tissuses which were obtained by percutaneous renal biopsy done between January 1994 and December 1996. Results : In both glomeruli and renal tubules, MIB-1 expression was observed only in 2 of 18 ($11.1\%$) cases of IgA nephropathy, in 2 of the 4 ($50\%$) cases of mebranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, in 4 of the 5 ($80\%$) cases of poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis. But MIB-1 expression was not detected in all cases of minimal lesion and membranous nephropathy. Renal tubules In another 7 cases of IgA nephropathy were MIB-1 positive. Conclusion : MIB-1 expression in renal tissues may relate to the cell proliferation in glomeruli and renal tubules. But the efficacy of MIB-1 expression as a marker of mesangial cell proliferation may reveal a limited value because of it's lower positive rate in IgA nephropathy.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.834-841
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• 2008

Purpose : This study was perfomed to analyze in detail the viral etiology of acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRI) in Cheunan, Korea by multiplex RT-PCR, including human rhinovirus (hRV) and newly identified viruses such as human metapneumovirus (hMPV) and human coronavirus (HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E/NL63). Method : Nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPA) were collected from 863 hospitalized children with ALRI on the first day of admission at Soonchunhyang University Cheonan Hospital and analyzed by multiplex RT-PCR from December 2005 to November 2006. Results : Viral agents were detected from 474 subjects (54.9%). The identified viral pathogens were hRV 9.2%, hMPV 6.8%, HCoV-229E/NL63 1.4%, and HCoV-OC43 2.1%. Coinfections with ${\geq}2$ viruses were observed in 108 patients (22.8%). The major period of viral ALRI was the first year of life. Clinical diagnoses of viral ALRI were pneumonia (59.5%), bronchiolitis (24.7%), tracheobronchitis (11.4%), and croup (4%). The most common causes of bronchiolitis was respiratory syncytial virus B (RSV B), whereas hMPV, hRV, HCoV-229E/NL63, and HCoV-OC43 were commonly found in patients with pneumonia. The number of hMPV infections peaked between March and May 2006. HCoV-OC43 was prevalent from November to February 2006, whereas HCoV-229E and hRV were detected throughout the year. Conclusion : Although the study was confined to one year, hMPV was not detected during winter and peaked between March and April, which was not consistent with previous studies'. This present study indicates that HCoV is a less common respiratory pathogen in cases of ALRI in Korean children

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.2 no.9
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• pp.595-602
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• 2013

WiFi fingerprinting is well known as an effective localization technique used for indoor environments. However, this technique requires a large amount of pre-built fingerprint maps over the entire space. Moreover, due to environmental changes, these maps have to be newly built or updated periodically by experts. As a way to avoid this problem, crowd-sourced fingerprint mapping attracts many interests from researchers. This approach supports many volunteer users to share their WiFi fingerprints collected at a specific environment. Therefore, crowd-sourced fingerprinting can automatically update fingerprint maps up-to-date. In most previous systems, however, individual users were asked to enter their positions manually to build their local fingerprint maps. Moreover, the systems do not have any principled mechanism to keep fingerprint maps clean by detecting and filtering out erroneous fingerprints collected from multiple users. In this paper, we present the design of a crowd-sourced fingerprint mapping and localization(CMAL) system. The proposed system can not only automatically build and/or update WiFi fingerprint maps from fingerprint collections provided by multiple smartphone users, but also simultaneously track their positions using the up-to-date maps. The CMAL system consists of multiple clients to work on individual smartphones to collect fingerprints and a central server to maintain a database of fingerprint maps. Each client contains a particle filter-based WiFi SLAM engine, tracking the smartphone user's position and building each local fingerprint map. The server of our system adopts a Gaussian interpolation-based error filtering algorithm to maintain the integrity of fingerprint maps. Through various experiments, we show the high performance of our system.

• Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 1999

The present study was conducted to find the effects of different cadmium(Cd) levels in diets on clinical toxicity, sperm capacity and histopathological changes in rats. Thirty male rats of Sprague-Dawley weighing 125.3$\pm$15.2g were randomly blocked into five groups according to body weights. Five levels of Cd in AIN-76 purified diet(0, 25, 50, 100 and 250 ppm) had been fed for 8 weeks. Cadmium was supplemented with a form of CdCl$_2$. 1. After 8 weeks of Cd intake had resulted in apparent cadmium intoxication; reduced growth rate, enlarged kidney and testis, decreased hematocrit value and hemoglobin content in response to supplemented Cd levels in the diets. 2. Cadmium accumulation in liver and kidney showed a tendency to increase in cadmium-exposed groups. The levels of metallothionein were also significantly elevated in the tissues of liver in response to the levels of Cd supplemented(P＜0.05). 3. Although sperm motility was not significantly different among treatments, rats fed Cd tended to have reduced sperm motility but sperm concentration of Cd supplemented groups were significantly lower than that of control(p＜0.05). 4. Based on the findings from gross lesion, rats fed 250ppm of Cd were externally emaciated, had exposed penis and observed atrophies of kidney and testis. Histopathological observation seemed that the liver of groups feeding Cd supplemented diets showed cellular degeneration and accumulation of eosinophilic materials in the capillaries. In kidney, rats fed Cd diets had shown tubular epithelium degeneration and lesions of basophilic materials, while testes were weakened in numbers of spermatid and sporadically enlarged of giant cells.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.320-325
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• 2009

The present study was carried out to investigate the acute oral toxicity and anti-obesity effects of a diglyceride preparation containing conjugated linoleic acid (DG+CLA). To test its acute oral toxicity, the DG+CLA was injected into 30 rats (15 males and 15 females) at dosage of 2,000 mg/kg and 5,000 mg/kg. Mortality rates, clinical signs, and body weight changes were monitored for 14 days following administration. According to the results, the lethal dose ($LD_50$) of DG+CLA was determined as >5,000 mg/kg in both sexes. There were no significant changes in general conditions, clinical signs, body weight, and gross lesions between the vehicle control and DG+CLA groups. For the anti-obesity studies, obese Zucker rats were randomly divided into 4 groups and fed saline, soybean oil, diglyceride, and DG+CLA, respectively, for 8 weeks. The DG+CLA groups presented significant differences in body weight, food efficiency ratio, serum lipid levels, and fat weight. Overall, the results showed that the DG+CLA did not have acute oral toxicity and reduced body weight, serum lipid levels, and fat gain.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.1750-1757
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of regular walking exercise on health-related parameters in the elderly with chronic diseases - apoplexy, overweight, impaired fasting glucose, and overweight + impaired fasting glucose. A total of 85 subjects, 27, 17, 21 and 20 in apoplexy (A), overweight (O), impaired fasting glucose (IFG), overweight + impaired fasting glucose group (O_IFG), respectively, completed a 12-week walking exercise. The health-related parameters were measured before and at the completion of the exercise program including anthropometric measurements, functional physical fitness levels, blood pressure, fasting glucose, blood lipid profiles and chronic inflammatory markers (CRPs). Significant improvements in body weight, BMI, %body fat, blood pressure, all blood lipid measurements and all measured physical fitness items were shown in A; those in %body fat, TC, HDL-C and LDL-C in O; those in body weight, BMI, %body fat, fasting glucose, TC, TG and HDL-C in IFG; and those in body weight, HDL-C and LDL-C in O_IFG (p<0.05). The results of the present study demonstrated that a 12-week walking exercise brought positive effects on body weight, bloody lipid profiles, fasting glucose and functional physical fitness levels in the elderly with chronic diseases. In conclusion, this study suggested that walking regularly is very effective in lowering the risks of developing chronic diseases.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.20-27
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• 1998

It is well known that troponin T(below TnT) is present in the myocardial cells and released during myocardial damage, so it`s very specific enzyme to myocardium. Availability of cardiac specific TnT in assessing perioperatively myocardial damage was evaluated from 34 open heart surgery patients. They consisted of 11 ischemic heart, 13 acquired valvular heart and 10 congenital heart cases. Patients were divided into two groups, group A(patients with myocardial damage) and group B(patients without myocardial damage), according to the symptom of chest pain suspecting angina and the ECG findings of ST segment and T wave changes which show myocardial ischemia and injury. Serum TnT levels were measured by enzyme immunoassay method preoperatively, immediately postoperatively, postoperative day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 7. We observed and analyzed the changes of serum TnT levels in two groups and compared the serum TnT levels with CK-MB levels measured at the same time. In group A, serum TnT levels showed 1.37$\pm$0.26$\mu$g/L, 3.16$\pm$0.66$\mu$g/L, 2.39$\pm$0.74$\mu$g/L, 2.49$\pm$0.76$\mu$g/L, and 1.23$\pm$0.60$\mu$g/L, immediate postoperatively, postoperatively day1, day2, day3, and day7, respectively. It was observed there were significant differences compared with those of group B(0.38$\pm$0.04$\mu$g/L, 0.34$\pm$0.05$\mu$g/L, 0.25$\pm$0.03$\mu$g/L, 0.24$\pm$0.04$\mu$g/L, and 0.11$\pm$0.03$\mu$g/L) during identical periods(P<0.01). Serum CK-MB level in group A significantly elevated to 145.04$\pm$35.08 IU/L on the postoperative day 1 compared to group B(31.28$\pm$5.87 IU/L, P<0.05), However, it stiffly decreased from day 2 and returned to preoperative level at day 3. When serum TnT level more than 1.0$\mu$g/L is thought to reflect myocardial damage, serum TnT had 100% of sensitivity and 87% of specificity in diagnosing the postoperative myocardial damage(p<0.01). I conclusion, serum TnT levels increased significantly at very early stage of myocardial damage and persisted much longer period than CK-MB. This suggests that serum TnT has more advantage and availability in assessing the perioperatively myocardial damage than any other tests.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.39 no.11 s.268
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• pp.828-837
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• 2006

Background: Tissue hypoxia is characteristic of many human malignant neoplasm, and hypoxia inducible factor-1(HIF-1) plays a pivotal role in essential adaptive response to hypoxia, and activates a signal pathway for the expression of the hypoxia-regulated genes, resulting in increasing $O_2$ delivery or facilitating metabolic adaptation to hypoxia. Increased level of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ has been reported in many human malignancies, but in non-small cell lung carcinoma the influence of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ on tumor biology, including neovascularization, is not still defined. In present study the relationship of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression on angiogenetic factors, relationship between the tumor proliferation and HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression, interaction of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression and p53, and relationship between HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression and clinico-pathological prognostic parameters were investigated. Material and Method: Archival tissue blocks recruited in this study were retrieved from fifty-nine patients with primary non-small cell lung carcinoma, who underwent pneumonectomy or lobectomy from 1997 to 1999. HIF-$1{\alpha}$, VEGF(vascular endothelial growth factor), and p53 protein expression and Ki-67 labeling index in tumor tissues were evaluated, using a standard avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex(ABC) immunohistochemistry. Relationship between the HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression and VEGF, p53 overexpression and correlation between the HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expresseion and Ki-67 index were analyzed. Clinico-pathologic prognostic parameters were also analyzed. Result: HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression in cancer cells was found in 24 of 59 cases of non-small cell lung carcinoma(40.7%). High HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression was significantly associated with several pathological parameters, such as pathological TMN stage(p=0.004), pT stage(p=0.020), pN stage (p=0.029), and lymphovascular invasion(p=0.019). High HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression was also significantly associated with VEGF immunoreactivity(p<0.001), and aberrant p53 expression(p=0.040). but was marginally associated with Ki-67 labeling index(p=0.092). The overall 5-year survival rate was 42.3%. The survival curve of patients with a high HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression was worse than that of patients with low-expression(p=0.002). High HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression was independent unfavorable factors with a marginal significance in multivariate analysis performed by Cox regression. Conclusion: It is suggested that high HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression may be associated with intratumoral neovascularization possibly through HIF-VEGF pathway, and high HIF-$1{\alpha}$ expression could be associated with lymph node metastasis and post operative poor prognosis in patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.468-477
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• 2009

Purpose: Hydrodynamic-based procedure is a simple and effective gene delivery method to lead a high gene expression in liver tissue. Non-invasive imaging reporter gene system has been used widely with herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase (HSV1-tk) and its various substrates. In the present study, we investigated to image the expression of HSV1-tk gene with 5-(2-iodovinyD-2'-deoxyuridine (IVDU) in mouse liver by the hydrodynamicbased procedure. Materials and Methods: HSV1-tk or enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP) encoded plasmid DNA was transferred into the mouse liver by hydrodynaminc injection. At 24 h post-injection, RT-PCR, biodistribution, fluorescence imaging, nuclear imaging and digital wholebody autoradiography (DWBA) were performed to confirm transferred gene expression. Results: In RT-PCR assay using mRNA from the mouse liver, specific bands of HSV1-tk and EGFP gene were observed in HSV1-tk and EGFP expressing plasmid injected mouse, respectively. Higher uptake of radiolabeled IVDU was exhibited in liver of HSV1-tk gene transferred mouse by biodistribution study. In fluorescence imaging, the liver showed specific fluorescence signal in EGFP gene transferred mouse. Gamma-camera image and DWBA results showed that radiolabeled IVDU was accumulated in the liver of HSV1-tk gene transferred mouse. Conclusion: In this study, hydrodynamic-based procedure was effective in liver-specific gene delivery and it could be quantified with molecular imaging methods. Therefore, co-expression of HSV1-tk reporter gene and target gene by hydrodynamic-based procedure is expected to be a useful method for the evaluation of the target gene expression level with radiolabeled IVDU.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2011

The present survey was conducted to provide basic information on automatic milking system (AMS) in relation to purchase motive, milk yield and quality, customer satisfaction, difficulties of operation and customer suggestions, etc. Purchase motives of AMS were insufficient labor (44%), planning of dairy experience farm (25%), better performance of high yield cows (19%) and others (6%), respectively. Average cow performance after using AMS was 30.9l/d for milk yield, 3.9% for milk fat, 9,100/ml for bacterial counts. Sixty-eight percentage of respondents were very positive in response to AMS use for their successors but 18% were negative. The AMS operators were owner (44%), successor (44%), wife (6%) and company worker (6%), respectively. The most difficulty (31%) in using AMS was operating the system and complicated program manual. The rate of response to system error and breakdown was 25%. The reasons for culling cow after using AMS were mastitis (28%), reproduction failure (19%), incorrect teat placement (12%), metabolic disease (7%) and others (14%), respectively. Fifty-six percentages of the respondents made AMS maintenance contract and 44% did not. Average annual cost of the maintenance contract was 6,580,000 won. Average score for AMS satisfaction measurement (1 to 5 range) was 3.2 with decrease of labor cost 3.7, company A/S 3.6, increase of milk yield 3.2 and decrease of somatic cell count 2.8, respectively. Suggestions for the higher efficiency in using AMS were selecting cows with correct udder shape and teat placement, proper environment, capital and land, and attitude for continuous observation. Systematic consulting was highly required for AMS companies followed by low cost for AMS setup and systematization of A/S.