• Title/Summary/Keyword: clearing effect

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Research on the Effect of Gardeniae Fructus on Regulatory T Cell Stimulation (조절 T세포에 미치는 치자(梔子)의 효과)

  • Seo, San;Jung, Hee-Jae;Jung, Sung-Ki
    • The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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    • v.31 no.2
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    • pp.189-200
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    • 2010
  • Objectives : Regulatory T cells can reduce inflammation and allergic reactions through their inhibitory functions. Gardeniae Fructus(GF) is a Heat-clearing herb used in traditional Korean medicine, and a wide range of studies on its antiinflammatory effects are being carried out. The authors investigated the effect that Gardeniae Fructus has on regulatory T cells. Methods : The authors screened 14 herbs for their effects on regulatory T cells. 100mg of each herb were separately dissolved in 1ml of sterile saline and the supernatant was harvested after 10 minutes of centrifuge at 15,000 rpm. The supernatant was filtered through a 0.2 ${\mu}m$ syringe filter, and the resulting stock was refrigerated at $4^{\circ}C$. The stock was diluted before testing and used at a final concentration of $0.01{\mu}g/ml$. CD4+CD25+ T cells from healthy BALB/c spleens were used as natural regulatory T cells (nTreg), and CD4+CD25- T cells were used as reactive T cells. CD4+CD25+ and CD4+CD25- T cells were activated with anti-CD3e ($10{\mu}g/m{\ell}$)/anti-CD28 ($1{\mu}g/m{\ell}$) and cultured. IL-10 from supernatant of the culture medium was measured by IL-10 cytokine ELISA. The percentages, cell numbers, phenotype and function of CD4+CD25+ Treg cells were determined by flow cytometry. Results : Gardeniae Fructus was shown to be the most potent herb among the 14 herbs tested for suppressing CD4+CD25- reactive T cell proliferation by stimulating CD4+CD25+ natural regulatory T cells. Gardeniae Fructus induces IL-10 secretion increase by stimulating CD4+CD25+ natural regulatory T cells, and indirectly suppresses CD4+CD25- reactive T cell proliferation through increasing CD25 (IL-2 receptor $\alpha$) expression and thus promoting bonding with IL-2. Gardeniae Fructus did not directly affect CD4+CD25- reactive T cell proliferation. Conclusions : Gardeniae Fructus suppressed reactive T cell proliferation through inducing increases in IL-10 secretion and CD25 (IL-2 receptor $\alpha$) expression.

Thermotropic Liquid Crystalline Behavior of Poly[1-{4-(4'-nitrophenylazo)phenoxycarbonylalkanoyloxy}ethylene]s (폴리[1-{4-(4'-니트로페닐아조)페녹시카보닐알카노일옥시}에틸렌]들의 열방성 액정 거동)

  • Jeong, Seung-Yong;Ma, Yung-Dae
    • Polymer(Korea)
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    • v.32 no.5
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    • pp.489-496
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    • 2008
  • The thermotropic liquid crystalline behavior of a homologous series of poly[1-{4-(4' nitrophenylazo) phenoxycarbonylalkanoyloxy}ethylene]s (NAPEn, n = $2{\sim}8$,10, the number of methylene units in the spacer) have been investigated. All of the homologues formed monotropic nematic phases. The glass transition temperatures decreased with n. This is attributed to a plasticization of the backbone by the side chains. The isotropic-nematic phase transition temperatures decreased with increasing n up to 7 and showed the odd-even effect. However it became almost constant when n is more than 7. This behavior was rationalized in terms of the change in the average shape of the side chain on varing the parity of the spacer. This rationalization also accounts for the observed variation of the entropic gain for the clearing transition. The mesophase properties of NAPEn were entirely different from those reported for the polymers in which the azobenzene groups are attached to polyacrylate, polymathacrylate, and polystyrene backbones through polymethylene spacers. The results indicate that the mode of chemical linkage of the side group with the main chain plays an important role in the formation, stabilization, and type of mesophase.

Antioxidant Activity of Citrus Peel and Effect on its Glucose Metabolism in L6 Rat Skeletal Muscle Cells (진피(陳皮)의 항산화 활성 및 L6 근육세포에서 당대사에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Soo Hyun;Park, Hae-Jin;Kim, Kyeong Jo;Kim, Min Ju;Lee, Jin A;Lee, Ah Reum;Roh, Seong-Soo
    • The Korea Journal of Herbology
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    • v.33 no.4
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    • pp.101-108
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    • 2018
  • Objectives : This study aimed to effects antioxidant activity of citrus peel extract (CPE) and effect on its glucose metabolism in L6 rat skeletal muscle cells. Methods : Antioxidative activities were evaluated by using 10 kinds of natural materials, and total polyphenol and flavonoid contents were examined. The L6 muscle cells toxicity of CPE was examined by MTT assay. Expression of glucose-related genes in L6 muscle cells by CPE treatment was analyzed by real-time PCR and western blotting. Results : The $IC_{50}$ values of DPPH and ABTS free radical scavenging activity of CPE were ($15.47{\pm}0.26{\mu}g/m{\ell}$ and $12.07{\pm}1.23{\mu}g/m{\ell}$, respectively), effectively clearing DPPH and ABTS. CPE showed total polyphenol and flavonoid contents ($20.30{\pm}0.38$ and $64.20{\pm}0.52$, respectively). The selected CPE were used in experiments using an effective concentration that is not toxic in L6 muscle cells. We investigated insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1), phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase regulatory (PI3KR), Akt, and glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4). mRNA analysis by realtime PCR showed no significant difference, but CPE-treated cells showed a tendency to increase in concentration-dependent manner. However, analysis of protein expression of Akt and GLUT4 by western blotting showed that CPE treatment significantly increased concentration dependent (p<0.001). Conclusions : As a result, citrus peel extract with high antioxidant activity regulates glucose metabolism in L6 muscle cells. Therefore, CPE can be a potential treatment for the treatment of diabetes.

Thermal and Optical Properties of Poly{1-(Cholesteryloxycarbonylalkanoyloxy)ethylene}s (폴리{1-(콜레스테릴옥시카보닐알카노일옥시)에틸렌}들의 열 및 광학 특성)

  • Jeong, Seung-Yong;Ma, Yung-Dae
    • Polymer(Korea)
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.144-152
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    • 2009
  • The thermal and optical properties of poly {1-(cholesteryloxycarbonylalkanoyloxy) ethylene}s (PCALEn, n=2$\sim$8,10, the number of methylene units in the spacer) were investigated. All of the homologues formed monotropic cholesteric phases with left-handed helical structures. PCALEn with n=2 or 10, in constrast with PCALEn with $3{\leq}n{\leq}8$, did not display reflection colors over the full cholesteric range, suggesting that the helical twisting power of the cholesteryl group highly depends on the length of the spacer connecting the cholesteryl group to the polyethylene chain. The glass transition temperatures decreased with increasing n. The isotropic-cholesteric phase transition temperatures decreased with increasing n up to 7 and showed an odd-even effect. However it became almost constant when n is more than 7. This behavior is rationalized in terms of the change in the average shape of the side chain on varing the parity of the spacer. This rationalization also accounts for the observed variation of the entropy gain for the clearing transition. The thermal stability and degree of order in the mesophase and the temperature dependence of the optical pitch observed for PCALEn were significantly different from those reported for cellulose tri(cholesteryloxycarbonyl)alkanoates. The results were discussed in terms of the differences in the chemical structure and flexibility of main chain and the number of the mesogenic units per repeating unit.

An Analysis for the Economic Impact of Forest Road Investment (임도시설 투자의 경제적 파급효과 분석)

  • Lee, Seung-Jung;Jung, Byung-Heon;Kim, Ki-Dong;Jeon, Hyon-Sun;Jo, Min-Woo
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.106 no.2
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    • pp.219-229
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    • 2017
  • Forest road is an essential infrastructure for forest management such as the composition and management of forest resources, timber and forest byproduct production & transportation. It has recently been utilized forest recreation and forest sports as well as also forest pest control, forest fire prevention and evolution. When you build a forest road, the economic function in the forest is activated, so that it can result in the ripple effect of induced employment, value-added creation and production inducement. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact caused by forest road construction occurring as the overall economy. For analysis it was applied to inter industry analysis method that is a method for analyzing the quantitative cross-correlation. The data were used in the Input-Output Tables In 2014, the Bank of Korea. When you build a forest road, economic effect due to the construction of the forest road is generated and economic effects are also generated due to the increase in the production of forest products after the construction of the forest road. Therefore, we will analyze the economic impact of the two effects. The estimated economic value of forest products, which is the economic effect of forest product cultivation, was calculated through some assumptions and the economic ripple effect was analyzed. The forest road construction sector is defined as land clearing and reclamation, and irrigation project construction and the forestry forest products sector is defined as the sum of raw timber, edible forest products and misc. forest products. In total, 32 sectors were classified, and except for the two sectors defined as forest road construction and forestry forest products, the remaining sectors were integrated according to the classification system of 30 integrated classifications of the Bank of Korea. As a result, the production inducement coefficient for forest construction was analyzed to be 2.767 and the production inducement coefficient for forestry forest products was analyzed to be 1.565. This means that 2,767 times the production of forest road construction investment is induced in the whole industry and the production of 1.562 times the amount of forestry forest products is caused by the whole industry as the production of forestry forest products increases. The value added inducement coefficient for forest road construction was 0.977 and the value added inducement coefficient for forestry forest products was 0.985. Forest road are essential infrastructure for forestry development and should be continuously invested because they are essential elements of timber production and forest byproduct production with functions such as forest management, forest recreation, forest sports, and town connection.

Development of a Simple and Reproducible Method for Removal of Contaminants from Ginseng Protein Samples Prior to Proteomics Analysis (활성탄을 이용한 불순물제거에 의한 효과적인 인삼 조직 단백질체 분석 방법 개선 연구)

  • Gupta, Ravi;Kim, So Wun;Min, Chul Woo;Sung, Gi-Ho;Agrawal, Ganesh Kumar;Rakwal, Randeep;Jo, Ick Hyun;Bang, Kyong Hwan;Kim, Young-Chang;Kim, Kee-Hong;Kim, Sun Tae
    • Journal of Life Science
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    • v.25 no.7
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    • pp.826-832
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    • 2015
  • This study describes the effects of activated charcoal on the removal of salts, detergents, and pigments from protein extracts of ginseng leaves and roots. Incubation of protein extracts with 5% (w/v) activated charcoal (100-400 mesh) for 30 min at 4℃ almost removed the salts and detergents including NP-40 as can be observed on SDS-PAGE. In addition, analysis of chlorophyll content showed significant depletion of chlorophyll (~33%) after activated charcoal treatment, suggesting potential effect of activated charcoal on removal of pigments too along with the salts and detergents. 2-DE analysis of activated charcoal treated protein samples showed better resolution of proteins, further indicating the efficacy of activated charcoal in clearing of protein samples. In case of root proteins, although not major differences were observed on SDS-PAGE, 2-DE gels showed better resolution of spots after charcoal treatment. In addition, both Hierarchical clustering (HCL) and Principle component analysis (PCA) clearly separated acetone sample from rest of the samples. Phenol and AC-phenol samples almost overlapped each other suggesting no major differences between these samples. Overall, these results showed that activated charcoal can be used in a simple manner to remove the salts, detergents and pigments from the protein extracts of various plant tissues.

A study on the improvement of distribution system by overseas agricultural investment (해외농업투자에 따른 유통체계 개선방안에 관한 연구)

  • Sun, Il-Suck;Lee, Dong-Ok
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.8 no.3
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    • pp.17-26
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    • 2010
  • Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

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