• Molecules and Cells
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• 제40권6호
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• pp.379-385
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• 2017

Drug addiction is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by the compulsive pursuit of drugs of abuse despite potential adverse consequences. Although several decades of studies have revealed that psychostimulant use can result in extensive alterations of neural circuits and physiology, no effective therapeutic strategies or medicines for drug addiction currently exist. Changes in neuronal connectivity and regulation occurring after repeated drug exposure contribute to addiction-like behaviors in animal models. Among the involved brain areas, including those of the reward system, the striatum is the major area of convergence for glutamate, GABA, and dopamine transmission, and this brain region potentially determines stereotyped behaviors. Although the physiological consequences of striatal neurons after drug exposure have been relatively well documented, it remains to be clarified how changes in striatal connectivity underlie and modulate the expression of addiction-like behaviors. Understanding how striatal circuits contribute to addiction-like behaviors may lead to the development of strategies that successfully attenuate drug-induced behavioral changes. In this review, we summarize the results of recent studies that have examined striatal circuitry and pathway-specific alterations leading to addiction-like behaviors to provide an updated framework for future investigations.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.196-203
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• 2013

Recent accumulating studies have reported that hypoxic preconditioning during ex vivo expansion enhanced the self-renewal or differentiation of various stem cells and provide an important strategy for the adequate modulation of oxygen in culture conditions, which might increase the functional bioactivity of these cells for cardiac regeneration. In this study, we proposed a novel priming protocol to increase the functional bioactivity of cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) for the treatment of cardiac regeneration. Firstly, patient-derived c-$kit^+$ CPCs isolated from the atrium of human hearts by enzymatic digestion and secondly, pivotal target molecules identified their differentiation into specific cell lineages. We observed that hCPCs, in response to hypoxia, strongly activated ERK phosphorylation in ex vivo culture conditioning. Interestingly, pre-treatment with an ERK inhibitor, U0126, significantly enhanced cellular proliferation and tubular formation capacities of CPCs. Furthermore, we observed that hCPCs efficiently maintained the expression of the c-kit, a typical stem cell marker of CPCs, under both hypoxic conditioning and ERK inhibition. We also show that hCPCs, after preconditioning of both hypoxic and ERK inhibition, are capable of differentiating into smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and cardiomyocytes (CMs), but not endothelial cells (ECs), as demonstrated by the strong expression of ${\alpha}$-SMA, Nkx2.5, and cTnT, respectively. From our results, we conclude that the functional bioactivity of patient-derived hCPCs and their ability to differentiate into SMCs and CMs can be efficiently increased under specifically defined culture conditions such as short-term hypoxic preconditioning and ERK inhibition.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.63-72
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• 2006

The purpose of this raper is to address the negative impedance instability in DC/DC converters. We present the negative impedance instability of PWM DC/DC converters loaded by constant power loads (CPLs). An approach to design digital controllers for DC/DC converters Is presented. The proposed method, called Power Alignment control technique, is applied to DC/DC step-down choppers operating in continuous conduction or discontinuous conduction modes with CPLs. This approach uses two predefined state variables instead of conventional pulse width modulation (PWM) to regulate the output voltage. A comparator compares actual output voltage with the reference and then switches between the appropriate states. It needs few logic gates and comparators to be implemented thus, making it extremely simple and easy to develop using a low-cost application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for converters with CPLs. Furthermore, stability of the proposed controllers using the small signal analysis as well as the second theorem of Lyapunov is verified. Finally, simulation and analytical results are presented to describe and verify the proposed technique.

• 한국통신학회논문지
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• 제31권8C호
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• pp.806-815
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• 2006

디지털 변복조 장치에는 디지털 신호의 표본화 속도를 변환시키는 표본화 속도 변환기(SRC: sample rate converter)가 필요한데, 여기에 사용되는 저역필터의 구현 문제를 연구하였다. 표본화 속도 변환율이 클 경우에는 저역필터의 신호처리 연산량이 많아져서 구현에 부담이 되므로 연산량을 감소시키는 방안이 중요하다. 본 논문에서는 이 필터를 2 단의 직렬 필터로 분할하여 구현하는 설계 방법을 제시하였고, 1 단 구조의 단일 필터로 구현하였을 경우에 비교하여 신호처리 연산량이 감소되는 것을 확인하였다. 표본화 속도 변환율이 증가할수록 2 단분할 방안에 의한 연산량 감소 효과는 증가하며, 변환율이 32 에서는 72 %까지 감소되는 것을 확인하였다. 변환율을 2 단으로 분할함에 있어서도 인수의 조합에 따라서 감소 효과가 다르게 나타났으므로, 여러 변환율에 대하여 최적 성능의 분할율을 조사하였다. 저역필터는 다상 필터 구조를 갖는 FIR 필터를 대상으로 하였으며, 필터계수의 설계는 Parks-McCllelan 알고리즘을 이용하였다.