• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.468-473
• /
• 2008

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) induces cell proliferation in human aortic smooth muscle cells (hAoSMCs), which may be involved in atherogenesis and intimal hyperplasia. Recent studies have demonstrated that $Cl^-$ channels are related to vessel cell proliferation induced by a variety of stimuli. In this study, we investigated a potential role of $Cl^-$ channels in the signaling pathway of LDL effects on hAoSMC proliferation with a focus on the activation of Erk1/2-PI3K/Akt and the subsequent upregulation of Egr-1. $Cl^-$ channel blockers, DIDS, but neither NPPB nor Furosemide, completely abolished the LDL-induced DNA synthesis and cell proliferation. Moreover, DIDS, but not NPPB, significantly decreased LDL-stimulated $Cl^-$ concentration, as judged by flow cytometry analysis using MQAE as a $Cl^-$-detection dye. DIDS pretreatment completely abolished the activation of Erk1/2 and PI3K/Akt in a dose-dependent manner that is the hallmark of LDL activation, as judged by Western blot and proliferation assays. Moreover, pretreatment with DIDS ($Cl^-$ channel blockers) but not LY294002 (PI3K inhibitors) completely abolished the LDL-induced upregulation of Egr-1 to the same extent as PD98059 (MEK inhibitors to inhibit Erk), as judged by Western blot and luciferase reporter assays. This is the first report, to our knowledge, that DIDS-sensitive $Cl^-$-channels play a key role in the LDL-induced cell proliferation of hAoSMCs via the activation of Erk1/2 and PI3K/Akt and the upregulation of Egr-1.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.33 no.3C
• /
• pp.271-280
• /
• 2008

M channel near-perfect-reconstruction(NPR) pseudo-QMF banks are a hybrid of conventional pseudo-QMF design and spectral factorization approach where the analysis and synthesis filters are cosine-modulated versions of the prototype-lowpass filter(p-LPF). However, p-LPF H(z) does not have linear-phase symmetry as well as magnitude-distortion optimization since it is obtained by spectral factorization of $2M^{-th}$ band filter $G(z)=z^{-(N-1)}H(z^{-1})H(z)$. A fair amount of attention, therefore, has been focused on the design of filter banks for reducing only alias-cancellation distortion without reconstructed-amplitude distortion. In this paper, we propose a new method for designing linear-phase p-LPF in NPR pseudo-QMF banks, which is based on Maxflat(maximally flat) FIR filters with closed-form transfer function. In addition, p-LPF H(z) is optimized in this approach so that the 2M-channel overall distortion response represented with $G(z)=H^2(z)$ approximately becomes an unit magnitude response. Through several examples of NPR pseudo-QMF banks, it is shown that the peek ripple of the overall magnitude distortion is less than $3.5{\times}10^{-4}\;({\simeq}-70dB)$ and analysis/synthesis filters have the sharp monotone-stopband attenuation exceeding 100 dB.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.42 no.2
• /
• pp.432-443
• /
• 2017

The primary goal of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard is to provide immersive audio environments for high-resolution broadcasting services such as UHDTV. This standard incorporates a wide range of technologies such as encoding/decoding technology for multi-channel/object/scene-based signal, rendering technology for providing 3D audio in various playback environments, and post-processing technology. The reference software decoder of this standard is a structure combining several modules and can operate in various modes. Each module is composed of independent executable files and executed sequentially, real time decoding is impossible. In this paper, we make DLL library of the core decoder, format converter, object renderer, and binaural renderer of the standard and integrate them to enable frame-based decoding. In addition, by measuring the computation complexity of each mode of the MPEG-H 3D-Audio decoder, this paper also provides a reference for selecting the appropriate decoding mode for various hardware platforms. As a result of the computational complexity measurement, the low complexity profiles included in Korean broadcasting standard has a computation complexity of 2.8 times to 12.4 times that of the QMF synthesis operation in case of rendering as a channel signals, and it has a computation complexity of 4.1 times to 15.3 times of the QMF synthesis operation in case of rendering as a binaural signals.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.260-270
• /
• 2012

Objectives : Hippocampus, a region of temporal lobe, plays an important role in the pathogenic mechanisms of brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, depression and temporal lobe epilepsy. This research is designed to investigate hippocampal changes after acupuncture stimulation at Shinmun(HT7) using 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis(2-DE). Methods : On postnatal-day 15, rat pups were randomly devided into Normal(NOR) or HT7 group. All of Pups kept with their mothers for 7 days, but pups in HT7 group received acupuncture stimulation at HT7 daily. On postnatal-day 21, hippocampus of each rat pup was dissceted 30 minutes after last acupuncture stimulation and the protein expressions were investigated using 2-DE. Results : After acupuncture stimulation at HT7, expression of 20 proteins were significantly increased. Succinate semialdehyde dehydrogenase, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase-like, transketolase, aconitate hydratase and phosphoglucomutase-1 were related to glucose methabolism. Eukaryotic initiation factor(eIF) 4A-II, eIF 4A-III, mitochondrial Tu translation elongation factor and chain A of crystal structure of the 70-Kda heat shock cognate protein involve in the protein synthesis in ribosome. Tubulin ${\beta}$-4 chain, tubulin T ${\beta}$-15 and tubulin ${\alpha}$-1B chain comprise cytoskeleton. Glutathione S-transferase(GST) ${\omega}$-1, GST P and GST Yb-3 can reduce oxidative stress. ${\beta}$-soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive fusion protein attachment protein is required for vesicular transport between the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi apparatus, glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase plays a major role in lipid biosynthesis, creatine kinase U-type catalyses the conversion of creatine and consumes adenosine triphosphate to create phosphocreatine and adenosine diphosphate. Platelet-activating factor acetylhydrolase IB subunit alpha and voltage depedent anion-selective channel protein 2 were also increased. Conclusions : The results suggest that acupuncture stimulation at HT7 may enhance glucose and lipid metabolism, protein synthesis, cytoskeletal substance and anti-oxidative stress in hippocampus.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
• /
• v.54 no.8
• /
• pp.45-52
• /
• 2017

This paper presents a high-performance software-hardware dehazing system based on a dedicated hardware accelerator for the haze removal. In the proposed system, the dedicated hardware accelerator performs the dark-channel-prior-based dehazing process, and the software performs the other control processes. For this purpose, the dehazing process is realized as an OpenCL kernel by finding the inherent parallelism in the algorithm and is synthesized into a hardware by employing a high-level-synthesis technique. The proposed system executes the dehazing process much faster than the previous software-only dehazing system: the performance improvement is up to 96.3% in terms of the execution time.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.25 no.1B
• /
• pp.89-98
• /
• 2000

This paper presents an active noise cancelling model using wavelet transform and subband filter banks based on adaptive filter. The analysis filter banks decompose input and error signals into QMF filter banks of lowpass and highpass bands. Each filter bank uses wavelet filter with dyadic tree structure. The decomposed input and error signals are iterated by adaptive filter coefficients of each subband using filtered-X LMS algorithm. The synthesis filter banks make output signal of wideband with perfect reconstruction to prepare adaptive filter output signals of each subband. The analysis and synthesis niter hants use conjugate quadrature filters for Pefect reconstruction. Also, The delayed LMS algorithm model for on-line identification of error path transfer characteristics is used gain and acoustic time delay factors. The proposed adaptive active noise cancelling modelis suggested by system retaining the computational and convergence speed advantage using wavelet subband filter banks.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.56 no.5
• /
• pp.761-766
• /
• 2018

Droplet-based microfluidic device has led to transformational new approaches in various applications including materials synthesis and high-throughput screening. However, efforts are required to enhance the production rate to industrial scale because of low production rate in a single droplet generator. In here, we present a method for enhancing production rate of monodisperse droplets via parallelization of flow-focusing generators. For this, we fabricated a three-dimensional monolithic elastomer device (3D MED) that has the 3D channel structures in a single layer, using a double-sided imprinting method. We demonstrated that the production rate of monodisperse droplet is increased by controlling the flow rate of continuous and dispersed phases in 3D MED with 8 droplet generators. Thus, we anticipate that this microfluidic system will be used in wide area including microparticle synthesis and screening system via encapsulation of various materials and cells in monodisperse droplets.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.02a
• /
• pp.37-37
• /
• 2010

Silicate-silsesquioxane or siloxane-silsesquioxane hybrid thin films are strong candidates as matrix materials for ultra low dielectric constant (low-k) thin films. We synthesized the silicate-silsesquioxane hybrid resins from tetraethoxyorthosilicate (TEOS) and methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) through hydrolysis and condensation polymerization by changing their molar ratios ([TEOS]:[MTMS] = 7:3, 5:5, and 3:7), spin-coating on Si(100) wafers. In the case of [TEOS]:[MTMS] 7:3, the dielectric permittivity value of the resultant thin film was measured at 4.30, exceeding that of the thermal oxide (3.9). This high value was thought to be due to Si-OH groups inside the film and more extensive studies were performed in terms of electronic, ionic, and orientational polarizations using Debye equation. The relationship between the mechanical properties and the synthetic conditions of the silicate-silsesquioxane precursors was also investigated. The synthetic conditions of the low-k films have to be chosen to meet both the low orientational polarization and high mechanical properties requirements. In addition, we have investigated a new solution-based approach to the synthesis of semiconducting chalcogenide films for use in thin-film transistor (TFT) devices, in an attempt to develop a simple and robust solution process for the synthesis of inorganic semiconductors. Our material design strategy is to use a sol-gel reaction to carry out the deposition of a spin-coated CdS film, which can then be converted to a xerogel material. These devices were found to exhibit n-channel TFT characteristics with an excellent field-effect mobility (a saturation mobility of ${\sim}\;48\;cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$) and low voltage operation (< 5 V). These results show that these semiconducting thin film materials can be used in low-cost and high-performance printable electronics.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.10-15
• /
• 2023

The carbonaceous materials have attracted much attention for utilization of anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. Among them, hollow carbon spheres have great advantages (high specific capacity and good rate capability) to replace currently used graphite anode materials, due to their unique features such as high surface areas, high electrical conductivities, and outstanding chemical and thermal stability. Herein, we have synthesized various sizes of hollow carbon spheres by a facile hardtemplate method and investigated the anode properties for lithium-ion batteries. The obtained hollow carbon spheres have uniform diameters of 350 ~ 600 nm by varying the template condition, and they do not have any cracks after the optimization of the process. Increasing the diameter of hollow carbon spheres decreases their specific capacities, since the larger hollow carbon spheres have more useless spaces inside that could have a disadvantage for lithium storage. The hollow carbon spheres have outstanding rate and cyclic performance, which is originated from the high surface area and high electrical properties of the hollow carbon spheres. Therefore, hollow carbon spheres with smaller diameters are expected to have higher specific capacities, and the noble channel structures through various doping approaches can give the great possibility of high lithium storage properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.08a
• /
• pp.105-105
• /
• 2012

We have developed a photoemission-assisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PAPE-CVD) [1,2], in which photoelectrons emitting from the substrate surface irradiated with UV light ($h{\nu}$=7.2 eV) from a Xe excimer lamp are utilized as a trigger for generating DC discharge plasma as depicted in Fig. 1. As a result, photoemission-assisted plasma can appear just above the substrate surface with a limited interval between the substrate and the electrode (~10 mm), enabling us to suppress effectively the unintended deposition of soot on the chamber walls, to increase the deposition rate, and to decrease drastically the electric power consumption. In case of the deposition of DLC gate insulator films for the top-gate graphene channel FET, plasma discharge power is reduced down to as low as 0.01W, giving rise to decrease significantly the plasma-induced damage on the graphene channel [3]. In addition, DLC thickness can be precisely controlled in an atomic scale and dielectric constant is also changed from low ${\kappa}$ for the passivation layer to high ${\kappa}$ for the gate insulator. On the other hand, negative electron affinity (NEA) of a hydrogen-terminated diamond surface is attractive and of practical importance for PAPECVD, because the diamond surface under PAPE-CVD with H2-diluted (about 1%) CH4 gas is exposed to a lot of hydrogen radicals and therefore can perform as a high-efficiency electron emitter due to NEA. In fact, we observed a large change of discharge current between with and without hydrogen termination. It is noted that photoelectrons are emitted from the SiO2 (350 nm)/Si interface with 7.2-eV UV light, making it possible to grow few-layer graphene on the thick SiO2 surface with no transition layer of amorphous carbon by means of PAPE-CVD without any metal catalyst.