• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.9-18
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• 2016

Bone matrix is properly maintained by osteoclasts and osteoblasts. In the tumor microenvironment, osteoclasts are increasingly differentiated by the various ligands and cytokines secreted from the metastasized cancer cells at the bone metastasis niche. The activated osteoclasts generate osteolytic lesions. For this reason, studies focusing on the differentiation of osteoclasts are important to reduce bone destruction by tumor metastasis. The N-myc downstream-regulated gene 2 (NDRG2) has been known to contribute to the suppression of tumor growth and metastasis, but the precise role of NDRG2 in osteoclast differentiation induced by cancer cells has not been elucidated. In this study, we demonstrate that NDRG2 expression in breast cancer cells has an inhibitory effect on osteoclast differentiation. RAW 264.7 cells, which are monocytic preosteoclast cells, treated with the conditioned media (CM) of murine breast cancer cells (4T1) expressing NDRG2 are less differentiated into the multinucleated osteoclast-like cells than those treated with the CM of 4T1-WT or 4T1-mock cells. Interestingly, 4T1 cells stably expressing NDRG2 showed a decreased mRNA and protein level of intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM1), which is known to enhance osteoclast maturation. Osteoclast differentiation was also reduced by ICAM1 knockdown in 4T1 cells. In addition, blocking the interaction between soluble ICAM1 and ICAM1 receptors significantly decreased osteoclastogenesis of RAW 264.7 cells in the tumor environment. Collectively, these results suggest that the reduction of ICAM1 expression by NDRG2 in breast cancer cells decreases osteoclast differentiation, and demonstrate that excessive bone resorption could be inhibited via ICAM1 down-regulation by NDRG2 expression.

• Membrane Journal
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• 제25권3호
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• pp.256-267
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• 2015

The goal is to compare two different aeration strategies for a pilot scale operation of submerged microfiltration with respect to the minimization of membrane fouling. A constant aeration (65 L/min) was examined parallel with a step-wise increase in airflow rate (40 to 65 L/min). The airflow rate was stepped to a higher rate every 5 min and the step-aeration cycles were repeated at regular intervals of 15 min. The comparative filtration runs were conducted with synthetic water containing powdered activated carbon (~10 g/L) and/or kaolin (~20 g/L) at a constant flux of 80 LMH. The extent and mechanisms of fouling in the microfiltration were identified by determining hydraulic resistance to filtration and the fouling reversibility after cleaning. Results showed that the step-aeration effectively alleviated fouling in the microfiltration of synthetic water compared to when using constant aeration. A substantial decrease in fouling was achieved by combining with coagulation using aluminum salts regardless of the aeration strategies. The constant aeration resulted in increased pore blocking likely due to increased accumulation of particles on the surface of membrane.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• 제62권4호
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• pp.347-353
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• 2019

Stings of jellyfish, which frequently occur in a warm season, cause severe pain, inflammation and sometimes irreversible results such as the death. Harmful venoms from jellyfish, therefore, have been studied for finding the therapeutic agents to relieve pain or to neutralize toxic components. However, it is still unclear if and how jellyfish venom reveal neuronal toxicity even though pain induction seems to result from the activation of nociceptors such as nerve endings. In this study, using HT-22 cell line, we investigated neurotoxic effects of the venom of Chrysaora pacifica (CpV) which appears in South-East ocean of Korea. In 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay, CpV significantly reduced the viability of HT-22 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Additionally, in 2',7'-Dichlorofluorescin diacetate fluorescence test under the culture condition lacking dominant inflammatory factors, CpV remarkably increased the production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). Reduced responsive fluorescence to Rhodamine123 and increased expression of intracellular cytochrome c were also observed in HT-22 cells treated with CpV. These indicate that CpV-reduced viability of HT-22 cells may be due to the activation of apoptotic signalings mediated with oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Furthermore, removing Ca²⁺ ion or adding N-acetyl-Lcystein remarkably blocked the CpV effect to reduce the viability of HT-22 cells. The findings in this study clearly demonstrate that CpV may activate Ca²⁺-mediated ROS signalings and mitochondrial dysfunction resulting in neuronal damage or death, and suggest that blocking Ca²⁺ pathway is a therapeutic approach to possibly block toxic effects of jellyfish venoms.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• 제3권2호
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• pp.17-28
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• 2000

Psychoacoustic characteristics of automobile horns play significant role in resulting subjective evaluation and psychphysiological reactions. However, comparison and differentiation of physiological responses to commercially available horns is a complicated task due to the small contrast in technical features of horns and the influence of such processes as habituation on physiological outcome with the increased number of auditory stimulation trials. In a study on 10 college students, there was performed comparative analysis of reactivity of physiological responses mediated by central and autonomic nervous systems in order to identify the role of habituation on decrement of psychophysiological responsivity and assess the ability to differentiate subjectively most and least preferred, as well as most and least appropriate horns according to physiological manifestations. The EEG and autonomic responses to 7 automobile horns were analyzed during 3 blocks of trials, with varying order of stimuli and changed acoustic parameters of horns in each block. Thus, responses were analyzed for totally 21 trials of auditory stimulation. It was shown that electrodermal and cardiovascular responses have different reactivity patterns to repeated stimulation: skin conductance measures habituated, cardiac reactivity showed no signs of habituation, and the vascular response demonstrated sensitization. The temporal EEG exhibited marked habituation of fast beta band power, while alpha-blocking effect did not habituate during the course of experiment. Differentiation of physiological responses of most and least preferred and appropriate horns was possible in our study, however, some cardiovascular reactivity measures differentiated during the entire course of the experiment, while EEG and electrodermal parameters showed significant differences only during first block of trials, and were later affected by the habituation.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제8권6호
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• pp.1881-1900
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• 2014

Since 802.11 wireless LANs are so widely used, it has become common for numerous access points (APs) to overlap in a region, where most of those APs are managed individually without any coordinated control. This pattern of wireless LAN usage is called the private OBSS (Overlapping Basic Service Set) environment in this paper. Due to frame collisions across BSSs, each BSS in the private OBSS environment suffers severe performance degradation. This study approaches the problem from the perspective of congestion control rather than noise or collision resolution. The retry limit, one of the 802.11 attributes, could be used for traffic control in conjunction with TCP. Reducing the retry limit causes early discard of a frame, and it has a similar effect of random early drops at a router, well known in the research area of congestion control. It makes the shared link less crowded with frames, and then the benefit of fewer collisions surpasses the penalty of less strict error recovery. As a result, the network-wide performance improves and so does the performance of each BSS eventually. Reducing the retry limit also has positive effects of merging TCP ACKs and reducing HOL-like blocking time at the AP. Extensive experiments have validated the idea that in the OBSS environment, reducing the retry limit provides better performance, which is contrary to the common wisdom. Since our strategy is basically to sacrifice error recovery for congestion control, it could yield side-effects in an environment where the cost of error recovery is high. Therefore, to be useful in general network and traffic environments, adaptability is required. To prove the feasibility of the adaptive scheme, a simple method to dynamically adjust the value of the retry limit has been proposed. Experiments have shown that this approach could provide comparable performance in unfriendly environments.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.128-136
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• 1999

The effects of computer-assisted instruction (CAl) using molecular-level animation and worksheet upon students' achievement, conceptual understanding, and learning motivation were investigated. Treatment and control groups (2 classes) were selected from a girls' high school in Seoul, and taught about dissolution for 3 class hours. Before the instructions, the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey (PALS) was administered, and the grade for a previous science course was obtained. The PALS score was used as a covariate, and the other as a blocking variable. After the instructions, the achievement test, the conceptions test, and the Instructional Materials Motivation Scale (lMMS) were administered. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the scores of the CAl group in the achievement and the conceptions tests were significantly higher than those of the control group. The CAl group also performed better in all subtests of the IMMS except the subtest of relevance.

• Archives of Pharmacal Research
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• 제25권5호
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• pp.561-571
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• 2002

The action mechanisms of several chemopreventive agents derived from herbal medicine and edible plants have become attractive issues in cancer research. Tea is the most widely consumed beverage worldwide. Recently, the cancer chemopreventive actions of tea have been intensively investigated. It have been demonstrated that the active principles of tea were attributed to their tea polyphenols. Recently, tremendous progress has been made in elucidating the molecular mechanisms of cancer chemoprevention by tea and tea polyphenols. The suppression of various tumor biomarkers including growth factor receptor tyrosine kinases, cytokine receptor kinases, P13K, phosphatases, ras, raf, MAPK cascades, NㆍFB, IㆍB kinase, PKA, PKB, PKC, c-jun, c-fos, c-myc, cdks, cyclins, and related transducing proteins by tea polyphenols has been studied in our laboratory and others. The IㆍB kinase (IKK) activity in LPS-activated murine macrophages (RAW 264.7 cells) was found to be inhibited by various tea polyphenols including (-) epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), theaflavin (TF-1), theaflavin-3-gal-late (TF-2) and theaflavin-3,3'-digallate (TF-3). TF-3 inhibited IKK activity in activated macrophages more strongly than did the other tea polyphenols. TF-3 inhibited both IKK1 and IKK2 activity and prevented the degradation of IㆍBㆍand IㆍBㆍin activated macrophage cells. The results suggested that the inhibition of IKK activity by TF-3 and other tea polyphenols could occur by a direct effect on IKKs or on upstream events in the signal transduction pathway. TF-3 and other tea polyphenols blocked phosphorylation of IB from the cytosolic fraction, inhibited NFB activity and inhibited increases in inducible nitric oxide synthase levels in activated macrophage. TF-3 and other tea polyphenols also inhibited strongly the activities of xanthine oxidase, cyclooxygenase, EGF-receptor tyrosine kinase and protein kinase C. These results suggest that TF-3 and other tea polyphenols may exert their cancer chemoprevention through suppressing tumor promotion and inflammation by blocking signal transduction. The mechanisms of this inhibition may be due to the blockade of the mitogenic and differentiating signals through modulating EGFR function, MAPK cascades, NFkB activation as wll as c-myc, c-jun and c-fos expression.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• 제8권6호
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• pp.484-492
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• 1998

The formation mechanism of the epitaxial cobalt silicide from Co/Ti/OOO) Si structure has been investigated. The transition temperature of CoSi to CoSi, was found to increase with increasing the Ti interlayer thickness, which may be owing to the occupation of the tetrahedral sites by Ti atoms in the CoSi crystal structure as well as the blocking effect of the Ti interlayer on the diffusion of Co. Also, the Co- Ti-O ternary compound formed at the metal! Si interface at the begining of silicidation, which seems to play an important role in epitaxial growth of Co silicide. The final layer structures obtained after a rapid thermal annealing of the Cot Ti/( 100) Si bi-layer structure turned out to be Ti oxide/Co- Ti-Si/epi-$CoSi_2$/OOO)

• Animal cells and systems
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.287-292
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• 2000

The present work examined the role of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and dopaminergic drugs on the secretion of maturational gonadotropin (GTH II) in relation to testosterone m treatment. This study provides evidence that the plasma GTH II levels are increased by T treatment in precocious males, but not in the immature animal. In addition, GnRH analogue (GnRHa) alone significantly increased the plasma GTH II secretion in immature rainbow trout treated with T, as well as in T-treated and T-untreated precocious males. However, injection with either dopamine (DA) or domperidone (DOM; DA D2 receptor antagonist) alone did not alter the basal plasma GTH 11 secretion in all experimental groups. The secretion of GTH II in the T-treated precocious males was remarkably influenced by GnRHa or combination of dopaminergic drugs. Notably, the effects of dopaminergic drugs on GnRHa-induced GTH II secretion w8s prolonged by T in precocious males. In T-treated immature animals, GnRHa-induced GTH II secretion was Increased only by a dose DOM (10$\mu$g/g body n) but not by higher dose DOM (100$\mu$/g body wt). In the T-untreated immature rainbow trout, however, plasma GTH 11 secretion was not influenced by the same treatments. Therefore, these results indicate that DA may be acting indirectly by blocking the effect of GnRH on GTH II secretion in vivo. T may act to modulate the relative contribution by the stimulatory (GnRH) and inhibitory (DA) neuroendocrine factors, which would ultimately determine the pattern of GTH II secretion.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.337-346
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• 1996

The patency of small size vascular grafts is poor, and the blood flow characteristics in the artery graft anastomosis are suspected as one of the important factors influencing intimal hyperplasia. Disturbed flow patterns caused by sixte and compliance mismatch generate unfavorable flow environment which promotes intimal thickening. Tapered vascular yuts are suggested in order to reduce sudden expansion near the anastomosis. The photochromic flow visualization method is used to measure the flout fields in the end-to-end anastomosis model under the carotid and femoral artery flow wave form. The results show that flow disturbance near the anastomosis is diminished in the tapered grafts comparing to the tubular graft. As the divergent ang1e decreases, we can reduce the low and oscillatory wall shear stress zone which is prone to intimal hyperplasia. The flow wave form effects the wall shear rate dis- tribution significantly. The steep deceleration and back flow in the femoral flow wAve form cause low mean wall shear rate and high oscillatory shear index.