• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.265-272
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• 2009

IVarious driving mechanisms to adapt to uneven environment have been developed for many urban search and rescue (USAR) missions. A tracked mechanism has been widely used to maintain the stability of robot's pose and to produce large traction force on uneven terrain in this research area. However, it has a drawback of low energy efficiency due to friction force when rotating. Moreover, single tracked mechanism can be in trouble when the body gets caught with high projections, so the track doesn't contact on the ground. A transformable tracked mechanism is proposed to solve these problems. The mechanism is designed with several articulations surrounded by tracks, used to generate an attack angle when the robot comes near obstacles. The stair climbing ability of proposed robot was analyzed since stairs are one of the most difficult obstacles in USAR mission. Stair climbing process is divided into four separate static analysis phases. Design parameters are optimized according to geometric limitations from the static analysis. The proposed mechanism was produced from optimized design parameters, and demonstrated in artificially constructed uneven environment and the actual stairway.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.14-18
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• 2014

A recent major development in computer technology is the advent of wearable computer systems. Wearable computer systems employ a wireless universal serial bus (WUSB), which refers to a combination of USB with the WiMedia wireless technical specifications. In this study, we focus on an integrated system of WUSB over wireless body area networks (WBANs) for wireless wearable computer systems. However, current WBAN MACs do not have well-defined quality of service (QoS) mapping and resource allocation mechanisms to support multimedia streams with the requested QoS parameters. To solve this problem, we propose a novel QoS-aware time slot allocation method. The proposed method provides fair and adaptive QoS provisioning to isochronous streams according to current traffic loads and their requested QoS parameters by executing a QoS satisfaction algorithm at the WUSB/WBAN host. The simulation results show that the proposed method improves the efficiency of time slot utilization while maximizing QoS provisioning.

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.50-56
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• 2004

Dibutyl phthalate (DBP) is used extensively in the plastic industry and has been known as an endocrine disruptor. Present study was undertaken to examine whether DBP can induce oxidative stress in mice. In this study, oxidative stress was measured in terms of the modification of lipid peroxidation and gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) activity. The serum toxicity index, level of lipid peroxidation and triglyceride (TG), and activity of GGT were measured in male ICR mice after a single administration of DBP (5 g/kg, po). DBP did not alter serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), creatinine, glucose and cholesterol level. However, the treatment with DBP was found to significantly increase the level of lipid peroxidation in liver and lung. The TG content and activity of GGT in the liver of DBP-exposed animals was also increased. These results indicate that DBP can induce mild oxidative stress in mice. The GGT activity is considered to be increased as one of the adaptive defense mechanisms to oxidative stress induced by DBP.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.109-114
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• 2010

The molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are poorly defined. Accumulating evidences indicate that chronic inflammatory responses and adaptive immunity play important roles in the development and progression of the disease. Recently, it has been shown that IL-17 producing CD4 T cells, named Th17 cells, which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, are involved in airway inflammation and COPD. In addition, we and others suggest that autoimmunity may play a critical role in the pathogenesis of COPD. Here, we will review the current understanding of roles of Th17 cells and autoimmune responses in COPD.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.385-393
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose a simple algorithm to adaptively adjust the value of dupthresh, the duplicate acknowledgement threshold that triggers the transmission control protocol (TCP) fast retransmission algorithm, to improve the TCP performance in a network environment with persistent packet reordering. Our algorithm uses an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and the mean deviation of the lengths of the reordering events reported by a TCP receiver with the duplicate selective acknowledgement (DSACK) extension to estimate the value of dupthresh. We also apply an adaptive upper bound on dupthresh to avoid the retransmission timeout events. In addition, our algorithm includes a mechanism to exponentially reduce dupthresh when the retransmission timer expires. With these mechanisms, our algorithm is capable of converging to and staying at a near-optimal interval of dupthresh. The simulation results show that our algorithm improves the protocol performance significantly with minimal overheads, achieving a greater throughput and fewer false fast retransmissions.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.79 no.1
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• pp.5-13
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• 2016

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic and progressive inflammatory disease of the airways and lungs that results in limitations of continuous airflow and is caused by exposure to noxious gasses and particles. A major cause of morbidity and mortality in adults, COPD is a complex disease pathologically mediated by many inflammatory pathways. Macrophages, neutrophils, dendritic cells, and CD8+ T-lymphocytes are the key inflammatory cells involved in COPD. Recently, the non-coding small RNA, micro-RNA, have also been intensively investigated and evidence suggest that it plays a role in the pathogenesis of COPD. Here, we discuss the accumulated evidence that has since revealed the role of each inflammatory cell and their involvement in the immunopathogenesis of COPD. Mechanisms of steroid resistance in COPD will also be briefly discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.808-813
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• 2003

Maintaining agility and responsiveness m designing and manufacturing activities are the key issues for manufacturing companies to cope with global competition. Distributed design and control systems are regarded as an efficient solution for agility and responsiveness. However, distributed nature of a manufacturing system complicates production activities such as design, simulation, scheduling, and execution control. Especially, existing simulation systems have limited external integration capabilities, which make it difficult to implement complex control mechanisms for the distributed manufacturing systems. Moreover, integration and coupling of heterogeneous components and models are commonly required for the simulation of complex distributed systems. In this paper, a collaborative and adaptive simulation architecture is proposed as an open framework for simulation and analysis of the distributed manufacturing enterprises. By incorporating agents with their distributed characteristics of autonomy, intelligence, and goal-driven behavior, the proposed agent-based simulation architecture can be easily adapted to support the agile and distributed manufacturing systems. The architecture supports the coordination and cooperation relations, and provides a communication middleware among the participants in simulation.

• Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.35-41
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• 2015

Whales are marine mammals that are fully adapted to aquatic environment. Whales breathe by lungs so they require adaptive system to low oxygen concentration (hypoxia) while deep and prolonged diving. However, the study for the molecular mechanism underlying cetacean adaptation to hypoxia has been limited. Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) is the central transcription factor that regulates hypoxia-related gene expression. Here we identified HIF-binding sites in whale genome by phylogenetic footprinting and analyzed HIF-target genes to understand how whales cope with hypoxia. By comparison with the HIF-target genes of terrestrial mammals, it was suggested that whales may retain unique adaptation mechanisms to hypoxia.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.106-113
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• 2015

In psychodynamic therapy, trauma related symptoms are considered as an attempt to overcome the traumatic experiences. Therefore, psychodynamic psychotherapy regards the symptom not as a patient's defect but as an adaptive reaction. In contrast to other therapies, psychodynamic theory places heavy emphasis on the understanding and resolution of the patient's symptoms. In addition, transference is a distinctive feature of this theory, which plays a significant role of reflecting the realistic evaluation on the therapist's characteristics, and in guaranteeing the therapeutic alliance. The psychodynamic therapist inducts meaning from the patient's unconscious mind. The therapist's task is to help the patient to better understand defense mechanisms guide their management of experiences and reactions, and facilitate a better understanding of their personal experiences.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.61-75
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• 2005

Physical and psychological events can produce stress response in various degrees. Stress affects many aspects of physiology including both brain and peripheral elements which is represented as hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Brain elements consist of corticotropin-releasing hormone(CRH), locus ceruleus(LC)-norepinephrine(NE)/autonomic system. Peripheral elements include pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system, which coordinate the stress response. Current trend of the stress researches is emphasizing the mechanisms of the stress response which is adaptive or become maladaptive. This review introduces 1) the concepts of stress, 2) physiological and behavioral aspects of stress responses, 3) the consequences of stress response, 4) the measurements of stress and 5) stress management for those interested in stress research.