• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.39-47
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• 2007

Background: Stromal cell-derived factor (SDF)-1 is a potent chemoattractant for activated T cells into the inflamed Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovium. To determine the effect of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) on the production of SDF-1 in the inflamed RA synovium. Methods: The expression of SDF-1 and MIF in RA and Osteoarthritis (OA) synovium was examined by immunohistochemical staining. The SDF-1 was quantified by RT-PCR and ELISA after RA fibroblast like synoviocyte (FLS) were treated with MIF in the presence and absence of inhibitors of intracellular signal molecules. The synovial fluid (SF) and serum levels of MIF and SDF-1 in RA, OA and healthy control were measured by ELISA. Results: Expression of SDF-1 and MIF in synovium was higher in RA patients than in OA patients. The production of SDF-1 was enhanced in RA FLS by MIF stimulation. Such effect of MIF was blocked by the inhibitors of NF-${\kappa}B$. Concentrations of SDF-1 in the serum and SF were higher in RA patients than in OA patients and healthy control. SDF-1 and MIF was overexpressed in RA FLS, and MIF could up-regulate the production of SDF-1 in RA FLS via NF-${\kappa}B$-mediated pathways. Conclusion: These results suggest that an inhibition of interaction between MIF from T cells and SDF-1 of FLS may provide a new therapeutic approach in the treatment of RA.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.376-387
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• 2018

Among a variety of environmental stresses heat, cold, chilling, high salt, drought, and so on exposed to plants, drought stress has been reported as a crucial factor to adversely affect the growth and productivity of plants. Therefore, to understand the mechanism for the drought stress signal transduction pathway in plants is more helpful to develop useful crops that display the enhanced tolerance against drought stress, and to expand crop growing areas. The signal transduction pathway for the drought stress in plants is largely categorized into two types; ABA-dependent pathway and ABA-independent pathway. It has been reported that two transcription factors, AREB/ABF and DREB2, play predominant roles in ABA-dependent and ABA-independent pathways, respectively. In addition to transcriptional regulation mediated by AREB/ABF and DREB2 transcription factors, post-translational modification (such as phosphorylation and ubiquitination) and epigenetic control are importantly involved in the signal transduction for drought stress. In this paper, we review current understanding of signal transduction pathway on drought stress in plants, especially focusing on the biological roles of a variety of signaling components related to drought stress response. Further understanding the mechanism of drought resistance in plants through this review will be useful to establish theoretical basis for developing drought tolerant crops in the future.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2003

Background: The role of macrophages in tumor angiogenesis is known to be the production of angiogenic cytokines and growth factors including TNF-${\alpha}$. Recently, macrophage also can produce the INF-${\gamma}$ that is being studied to be involved in angiogenic inhibition. Thus, the importance of macrophages in tumor angiogenesis is might being an angiogenic switch. Thus, the hypothesis tested here is that TNF-${\alpha}$ can modulate the INF-${\gamma}$ production in the macrophages from tumor environment as a part of tumor angiogenic switch. Methods: Macrophages in tumor environment were obtained from the peritoneal cavity of C57BL/6 mice injected with B16F10 melanoma cell line for 6 or 11 days. $Mac1^+$-macrophages were purified using magnetic bead ($MACs^{TM}$; Milteny Biotech, Germany) and cultured with various concentrations of TNF-${\alpha}$ for various time points at $37^{\circ}C$. The supernatants were analyzed for IFN-${\gamma}$ or VEGF by ELISA kit (Endogen, Woburn, MA). Results: Residential macrophages from the peritoneal cavity did not respond to LPS or TNF-${\alpha}$ to produce INF-${\gamma}$. However, the cells from tumor environment produced IFN-${\gamma}$ as well as VEGF and upregulated by the addition of LPS or TNF-${\alpha}$. RT-PCR analysis revealed the external TNF-${\alpha}$-induced IFN-${\gamma}$ gene expression in the macrophages from tumor environment. Conclusion: The overall data suggest that the macrophages in tumor environment might have an important role not only in angiogenic signal but also in anti-angiogenic signal by producing related cytokines. And TNF-${\alpha}$ might be a key cytokine in tumor angiogenic switch.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.337-349
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• 1999

The extracellular matrix(ECM) is a complex network of different combination of collagens, glycosaminoglycans, laminin, fibronectin, and many other glycoproteins including proteolytic enzymes. The composition and organization of the ECM contributes to the uniques physical or biomechanical properties of a tissue. Fibronectins(FN) are dimeric glycoproteins located on cell surfaces, in the matrix of connective tissue, and in blood. Fibronectins mediate cell attachment to collagen substratum and have been implicated in a variety of important biological processes, including embryogenesis and cell differentiation. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of surgical induction of anterior disk displacement(ADD) on distribution of fibronectin in the rabbit temporomandibular joint(TMJ) tissues included the articular cartilage, disc, retrodiscal tissue, articular eminence using an immunohistochemical technique. The left TMJ was exposed surgically, and all discal attachments were severed except for the posterior attachment. The disk was then repositioned anteriorly and sutured to the zygomatic arch. The right TMJ served as a shamoperated control. Normal joints were used as a nonoperated control. Fourty-five rabbits were used for experiments in total. For fibronectin immunohistochemical study, eighteen rabbits (one normal group and 5 experimental groups, each group consists of 3 rabbits) were used. The experimental rabbits were sacrified after operation period of 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 weeks on fibronectin. The obtained results were as follows ; 1. Fibronectin immunoreaction on all TMJ tissues(mandibular condyle, articular disc, retrodiscal tissue, articular eminence) in the normal rabbit was observed. Especially the reverse cell layer and proliferation zone of articular cartilage of condyle show strong positive reaction. 2. Depletion of fibronectin in the all TMJ tissues except hypertrophic zone of articular cartilage occurred at 2 weeks following induction of ADD. 3. The restoration of immunoreaction at 4 weeks was observed and a progressive increasing reaction at 6 weeks, 8 weeks also was found. Our study generally showed degenerative changes in TMJ tissues after ADD although TMJ tissues adapted or degenerated to abnormal loads and stress distribution according to the remodeling capacity of TMJ tissues.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2018

This study was conducted to develop a device for measuring the air flow by space variation through monitoring program, which acquires data by each point from each environmental sensor located in the greenhouse. The distribution of environmental factors(air temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc.) in the greenhouse is arranged at 12 points according to the spatial variation and a large number of measurement points (36 points in total) on the X, Y and Z axes were selected. Considering data loss and various greenhouse conditions, a bit rate was at 125kbit/s at low speed, so that the number of sensors can be expanded to 90 within greenhouse with dimensions of 100m by 100m. Those system programmed using MATLAB and LabVIEW was conducted to measure distributions of the air flow along the greenhouse in real time. It was also visualized interpolated the spatial distribution in the greenhouse. In order to verify the accuracy of CFD modeling and to improve the accuracy, it will compare the environmental variation such as air temperature, humidity, wind speed and $CO_2$ concentration in the greenhouse.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.38-48
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• 2011

Purpose: Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is the most common glomerulopathy causing pediatric renal failure. Since specific treatment targeting the etiology and pathophysiology of primary FSGS is yet elusive, the authors explored the pathophysiology of FSGS by transcriptome analysis of the disease using an animal model. Methods: FGS/kist strain, a mouse model of primary FSGS, and RFM/kist strain, as control and the parent strain of FGS/kist, were used. Kidney tissues were harvested and isolated renal cortex was used to extract mRNA, which was run on AB 1700 mouse microarray chip after reverse transcription to get the transcriptome profile. Results: Sixty two genes were differentially expressed in FGS/kist kidney tissue compared to the control. Those genes were related to cell cycle/cell death, immune reaction, and lipid metabolism/vasculopathy, and the key molecules of their networks were TNF, IL-6/4, IFN${\gamma}$, TP53, and PPAR${\gamma}$. Conclusion: This study confirmed that renal cell death, immune system activation with subsequent fibrosis, and lipid metabolism-related early vasculopathy were involved in the pathophysiology of FSGS. In addition, the relevance of methodology used in this study, namely transcriptome profiling, and Korean animal model of FGS/kist was validated. Further study would reveal novel pathophysiology of FSGS for new therapeutic targets.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.354-364
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• 2017

The importance of marine pollution prevention is increasing day by day both at home and overseas. Against this context, this study proposes policy directions to forge an improved system of coastal control for local governments. I have analyzed the coastal pollution response capacity of local governments to find out how the central government can better support these efforts to reinforce capacity. For the purposes of this research, I carried out a number of case studies on large-scale marine pollution accidents that occurred at home and abroad. According to the results, I identified the implications of the coastal pollution response capacity of local governments and suggested several alternatives such as construction of step by step response system, strengthening education and training, part of human network activation, establishment of grounds for securing response resources, and establishment of dedicated department to prepare for potential future marine pollution accidents. However, as little research has been done on the coastal pollution response capacity of local governments, this work may be regarded as an experimental study to help facilitate follow-up research in the future.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.31 no.7B
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• pp.679-689
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• 2006

Delivering multicast stream is one of the cost-saving approach in the large scale VOD environment. Because implementing VCR-like interactions for user's convenience in the multicast streaming system involves complex problems, we need the proper solutions for them. In this paper, we propose a hybrid scheme which uses the general P2P and the patching scheme with the Collaborative Interaction Streaming Scheme(CISS). CISS provides jumping functionability to the appropriate multicast session after VCR-like interaction in the environment in which multiple peers transmit VCR-like interaction streams to the VCR-like functionability request node to reduce the loads generated by frequent join or departure of peers at the multicast tree during providing VCR-like functionability. Therefore, with the proposed scheme we can distribute network traffic and reduce control overhead and latency. And to evaluate the performance of proposed scheme we compare it in the aspect of the performance of streaming delivery topology, control overhead and streaming quality with P2Cast[10] and DSL[11]. The simulation result shows that proposed P2Patching reduces about 30% of process overhead and enhances about $25{\sim}30%$ of streaming quality compared with DSL.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.746-754
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• 2016

Smart healthcare systems, a convergent industry based on information and communications technologies (ICT), has emerged from personal health management to remote medical treatment as a distinguished industry. The smart healthcare environment provides technology to deliver vital information, such as pulse rate, body temperature, health status, and so on, from wearable devices to the hospital network where the physician is located. However, since it deals with the patient's personal medical information, there is a security issue for personal information management, and the system may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks in wireless networks. Therefore, this study focuses on a key-development and device-management system to generate keys in the smart environment to safely manage devices. The protocol is designed to provide safe communications with the generated key and to manage the devices, as well as the generated key. The security level is analyzed against attack methods that may occur in a healthcare environment, and it was compared with existing key methods and coding capabilities. In the performance evaluation, we analyze the security against attacks occurring in a smart healthcare environment, and the security and efficiency of the existing key encryption method, and we confirmed an improvement of about 15%, compared to the existing cipher systems.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1150-1158
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• 2010

In this study, the Polynomial-based Radial Basis Function Neural Networks is proposed as one of the recognition part of overall face recognition system that consists of two parts such as the preprocessing part and recognition part. The design methodology and procedure of the proposed pRBFNNs are presented to obtain the solution to high-dimensional pattern recognition problem. First, in preprocessing part, we use a CCD camera to obtain a picture frame in real-time. By using histogram equalization method, we can partially enhance the distorted image influenced by natural as well as artificial illumination. We use an AdaBoost algorithm proposed by Viola and Jones, which is exploited for the detection of facial image area between face and non-facial image area. As the feature extraction algorithm, PCA method is used. In this study, the PCA method, which is a feature extraction algorithm, is used to carry out the dimension reduction of facial image area formed by high-dimensional information. Secondly, we use pRBFNNs to identify the ID by recognizing unique pattern of each person. The proposed pRBFNNs architecture consists of three functional modules such as the condition part, the conclusion part, and the inference part as fuzzy rules formed in 'If-then' format. In the condition part of fuzzy rules, input space is partitioned with Fuzzy C-Means clustering. In the conclusion part of rules, the connection weight of pRBFNNs is represented as three kinds of polynomials such as constant, linear, and quadratic. Coefficients of connection weight identified with back-propagation using gradient descent method. The output of pRBFNNs model is obtained by fuzzy inference method in the inference part of fuzzy rules. The essential design parameters (including learning rate, momentum coefficient and fuzzification coefficient) of the networks are optimized by means of the Particle Swarm Optimization. The proposed pRBFNNs are applied to real-time face recognition system and then demonstrated from the viewpoint of output performance and recognition rate.