• Title/Summary/Keyword: cross-over studies

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Living Cell Functions and Morphology Revealed by Two-Photon Microscopy in Intact Neural and Secretory Organs

  • Nemoto, Tomomi
    • Molecules and Cells
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    • v.26 no.2
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    • pp.113-120
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    • 2008
  • Laser light microscopy enables observation of various simultaneously occurring events in living cells. This capability is important for monitoring the spatiotemporal patterns of the molecular interactions underlying such events. Two-photon excited fluorescence microscopy (two-photon microscopy), a technology based on multiphoton excitation, is one of the most promising candidates for such imaging. The advantages of two-photon microscopy have spurred wider adoption of the method, especially in neurological studies. Multicolor excitation capability, one advantage of two-photon microscopy, has enabled the quantification of spatiotemporal patterns of $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ and single episodes of fusion pore openings during exocytosis. In pancreatic acinar cells, we have successfully demonstrated the existence of "sequential compound exocytosis" for the first time, a process which has subsequently been identified in a wide variety of secretory cells including exocrine, endocrine and blood cells. Our newly developed method, the two-photon extracellular polar-tracer imaging-based quantification (TEPIQ) method, can be used for determining fusion pores and the diameters of vesicles smaller than the diffraction-limited resolution. Furthermore, two-photon microscopy has the demonstrated capability of obtaining cross-sectional images from deep layers within nearly intact tissue samples over long observation times with excellent spatial resolution. Recently, we have successfully observed a neuron located deeper than 0.9 mm from the brain cortex surface in an anesthetized mouse. This microscopy also enables the monitoring of long-term changes in neural or glial cells in a living mouse. This minireview describes both the current and anticipated capabilities of two-photon microscopy, based on a discussion of previous publications and recently obtained data.

Psychosocial Factors and Musculoskeletal Pain Among Rural Hand-woven Carpet Weavers in Iran

  • Chaman, Reza;Aliyari, Roqayeh;Sadeghian, Farideh;Shoaa, Javad Vatani;Masoudi, Mahmood;Zahedi, Shiva;Bakhshi, Mohammad A.
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.120-127
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    • 2015
  • Background: Musculoskeletal pain (MSP) is a common and disabling problem among carpet weavers and is linked to physical and psychosocial factors of work. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of MSP, its psychosocial risk factors, and association of pain in each pair of anatomical sites among carpet weavers. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among 546 hand-woven carpet weavers in rural small-scale workshops of Iran. Data were collected by using parts of a standardized CUPID (Cultural and Psychosocial Influences on Disability) questionnaire focused on MSP in 10 body sites, including the low-back, neck, both right and left shoulders, elbows, wrists/hands, individual, physical and psychosocial risk factors. Statistical analysis was performed applying logistic regression models. Results: Prevalence of MSP in at least one body sitewas 51.7% over the past month. The most common sites were low back and right shoulder pain 27.4% and 20.1%, respectively. A significant difference was found between the mean number of painful anatomical sites and the level of education, age, physical loading at work, time pressure, lack of support, and job dissatisfaction. In pairwise comparisons, strongest association was found between pain in each bilateral anatomical site (odds ratio = 11.6-35.3; p < 0.001). Conclusion: In home-based workshops of carpet weaving, psychosocial factors and physical loading were associated with MSP. This finding is consistent with studies conducted among other jobs. Considering the preventive programs, the same amount of attention should be paid to psychosocial risk factors and physical loading. Also, further longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the relationship of psychological factors.

A Study on ADL and Dementia of Aged Person with Medicaid in Korea (전국 법정복지대상 노인의 일상생활 수행능력과 치매와의 상관관계)

  • 유호신
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.31 no.1
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    • pp.139-149
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    • 2001
  • The purpose of this study was to analyze characteristics related to the activity of Daily Living (ADL) and dementia among the elderly people who have Medicaid. The cross-sectional descriptive survey study was a nationwide randomization sampling among the population of elderly families who have Medicaid. The data were collected during the month of October, 1999 and total sample was 1,027 elderly people. There were major findings according to the studies. In the results of the ADL assessment most of elderly people were within the 24 to 45 point range. Also, 63.3% of elderly people who made 45 points do not need help when performing daily activities according to the 15 areas of activity components, and 4.9% of these people couldn't do their daily activities. The results of the Dementia assessment were 70.6% of elderly people were in the normal range, 21.7% have a mild case, and 2.8% have severe case of dementia. These were found by using instruments for mental states, which simplified to items of detection of early dementia. In the result of these tests, there was a significantly positive correlation between ADL and degree of dementia with the pearson correlation coefficients. As a result of these studies, the author recommend to strengthen function and organization of public health like a visiting nurse center for elderly people who are over 65 years old. In addition, the government should apply early detection and management system for dementia in the community continuously and cost-effectively, especially for elderly people who live alone and are vulnerable elderly as our priority.

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The Spatio-temporal Changes in the Sphere Influence of the Secondary Education in Geochang-Gun, Gyeongnam (거창군 중등교육세력권의 시.공간적 변화)

  • Lee, Jeon;Park, Woo-Sang;Lee, Jong-Ho
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.12 no.6
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    • pp.656-670
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    • 2006
  • In Gcochang-Gun, the population decrease, due to a rural exodus phenomenon, has led to the absolute decline in the numbers of both primary and secondary schools and students. However, the high schools in Geochang-Gun show an unusual characteristic that the students from other areas outside Geochang-Gun cover about 25% of the total students studying in Geochang-Gun. This is quite contrary to the contention that one of the major factors hindering the development of rural areas is generally the inferior condition of education. In this context, this paper aims to explore the spatio-temporal changes in the sphere of influence of the secondary education with special reference to Geochang-Gun, Gyeongnam. Most importantly Geochang High School and Geochang Daesung High School account for over 98% of the students coming from other areas outside Geochang-Gun's cross-border counties. This means that the sphere of influence of the Geochang's secondary education is dependent largely upon the two private academic high schools.

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Ultrasonographic Examination of Compression Neuropathy in the Upper Extremity (상지의 압박성 신경병증의 초음파 검사)

  • Chung, Yang-Guk;Kim, Bae-Gyun
    • The Journal of Korean Orthopaedic Ultrasound Society
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.64-72
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    • 2008
  • Compression neuropathy around elbow and wrist are one of the common disturbing problems in the upper extremity. The understanding of normal nerve architectures and pathophysiologic changes in compression neuropathy is important to interpret the ultrasonographic images correctly. Compression neuropathies have characteristic ultrasonographic imaging features of flattened nerve at compression and hypoechoic swollen nerve with loss of fascicular patterns at proximal segments. Dynamic ultrasonographic imagings on motion can show dymanic subluxation of ulnar nerve and medial head of triceps muscle over the medial epicondyle in snapping triceps syndrome. Dynamic compression of median nerve also can be visualized in pronator teres syndrome by dynamic imaging studies. A quantitative measures of cross sectional area or compression ratio can be helpful to diagnose compression neuropathies, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or cubital tunnel syndrome. With the clinical features and electeophysiologic studies, the untrasonographic imagings are useful tool for evaluation of the compression neuropathies in the upper extremities.

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Keyword Extraction from News Corpus using Modified TF-IDF (TF-IDF의 변형을 이용한 전자뉴스에서의 키워드 추출 기법)

  • Lee, Sung-Jick;Kim, Han-Joon
    • The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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    • v.14 no.4
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    • pp.59-73
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    • 2009
  • Keyword extraction is an important and essential technique for text mining applications such as information retrieval, text categorization, summarization and topic detection. A set of keywords extracted from a large-scale electronic document data are used for significant features for text mining algorithms and they contribute to improve the performance of document browsing, topic detection, and automated text classification. This paper presents a keyword extraction technique that can be used to detect topics for each news domain from a large document collection of internet news portal sites. Basically, we have used six variants of traditional TF-IDF weighting model. On top of the TF-IDF model, we propose a word filtering technique called 'cross-domain comparison filtering'. To prove effectiveness of our method, we have analyzed usefulness of keywords extracted from Korean news articles and have presented changes of the keywords over time of each news domain.

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Overexpression of HER-2/neu in Patients with Prostatic Adenocarcinoma

  • Zahir, Shokouh Taghipour;Tafti, Hamid Fallah;Rahmani, Koorosh
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.15 no.15
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    • pp.6425-6428
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    • 2014
  • Background: Prostatic adenocarcinoma is one of the main causes of cancer death, and its timely diagnosis and preventing its progression dramatically helps improve life indexes. Given the high disease recurrence rate, today, research is more inclined toward exploring causes of recurrence and development, and innovation of modern treatment methods. Several studies have explored over-expression of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2/neu) in prostatic cancer so far, with different results. Thus, it was decided to investigate HER-2/neu overexpression in patients with prostatic adenocarcinoma in Iran. Materials and Methods: A sample size of 40 patients with prostate cancer entered the study, using a cross-sectional, non-randomized sampling method. Parameters studied included patient age at surgery, Gleason score, serum prostatic specific antigen (PSA) before surgery, and positive sample rate after immunohistochemical staining to investigate HER-2/neu overexpression. Results: In terms of HER-2/neu receptor staining rate, of 40 slides, 16 (40%) scored 0, 13 (32.5%) 1+, 7 (17.5%) 2+, and 4 (10%) 3+. In total 27.5% of slides showed HER-2/neu overexpression. In terms of age, an inverse correlation was found (-0.181), but without significance (p=0.263). In terms of serum PSA, the correlation coefficient was 0.449 (p=0.004). With respect to Gleason score, the coefficient was 0.190 (p=0.240). Conclusions: In this study, HER-2/neu overexpression occurred in 27.5% of prostate cancer cases, which is a relatively high figure, compared to similar studies elsewhere. While, we failed to reveal any relationship between HER-2/neu expression status with progression and prognosis of disease, it was demonstrated that the serum PSA level was significantly higher in cases with increased receptor expression.

A Comparative Study between Stock Price Prediction Models Using Sentiment Analysis and Machine Learning Based on SNS and News Articles (SNS와 뉴스기사의 감성분석과 기계학습을 이용한 주가예측 모형 비교 연구)

  • Kim, Dongyoung;Park, Jeawon;Choi, Jaehyun
    • Journal of Information Technology Services
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    • v.13 no.3
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    • pp.221-233
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    • 2014
  • Because people's interest of the stock market has been increased with the development of economy, a lot of studies have been going to predict fluctuation of stock prices. Latterly many studies have been made using scientific and technological method among the various forecasting method, and also data using for study are becoming diverse. So, in this paper we propose stock prices prediction models using sentiment analysis and machine learning based on news articles and SNS data to improve the accuracy of prediction of stock prices. Stock prices prediction models that we propose are generated through the four-step process that contain data collection, sentiment dictionary construction, sentiment analysis, and machine learning. The data have been collected to target newspapers related to economy in the case of news article and to target twitter in the case of SNS data. Sentiment dictionary was built using news articles among the collected data, and we utilize it to process sentiment analysis. In machine learning phase, we generate prediction models using various techniques of classification and the data that was made through sentiment analysis. After generating prediction models, we conducted 10-fold cross-validation to measure the performance of they. The experimental result showed that accuracy is over 80% in a number of ways and F1 score is closer to 0.8. The result can be seen as significantly enhanced result compared with conventional researches utilizing opinion mining or data mining techniques.

'Outspoken' Oral Hygienists Promote Oral Health Care Awareness at Public Events for (Pregnant) Women and Young Mothers

  • Buunk-Werkhoven, Yvonne A.B.;Gortzak, Jolanda J.C.;Sjoerts, Judith J.E.;Frederiks, Annemarie
    • Journal of dental hygiene science
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    • v.21 no.3
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    • pp.140-149
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    • 2021
  • Background: The aim of these two (pre COVID-19 pandemic) public health studies in Amsterdam were to promote the profession of the oral hygienist and to increase oral health care awareness among (pregnant) women and young mothers, who were visitors of public consumer's exhibitions. Methods: Two cross-sectional studies were carried out. In 2018, during the first study, 1,765 visitors of the Household Fair completed a questionnaire. In 2020, during Study 2, 304 visitors of the Nine-Month Fair completed a semi-structured online questionnaire. At both fairs a team of 'outspoken' oral hygienists, i.e., members of the Foundation 'Goed Gebekt', provided the visitors with tailored advices about general health related to adults, mothers', and their children' oral health, using natural routine interviewing, that was based on their own professional daily practical experience. Results: In Study 1, just over half (53.5%) of a total of 1,742 visitors, (85.7% female) was younger than 45 years old. In Study 2, 210 visitors with a mean age of 30.7 years were included. Most women reported their self-perceived oral health as 'good' (mean=8.0, standard deviation=1.3; range 3~10). Qualified (self) employed oral hygienists seem to be known among the visitors, but still only visited upon referral of the dentists. Up to the age of 18 reimbursements by the basic insurance is still unknown to the public. Conclusion: The Foundation 'Goed Gebekt' encourages other oral hygienists to make their own initiatives and experiences public and to share it. Public awareness is needed for oral health promotion and the development of optimally targeted interventions among (pregnant) women and young mothers by oral hygienists.

Daily walnut intake improves metabolic syndrome status and increases circulating adiponectin levels: randomized controlled crossover trial

  • Hwang, Hyo-Jeong;Liu, Yanan;Kim, Hyun-Sook;Lee, Heeseung;Lim, Yunsook;Park, Hyunjin
    • Nutrition Research and Practice
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.105-114
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    • 2019
  • BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Several previous studies have investigated whether regular walnut consumption positively changes heart-health-related parameters. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of daily walnut intake on metabolic syndrome (MetS) status and other metabolic parameters among subjects with MetS. SUBJECTS/METHODS: This study was a two-arm, randomized, controlled crossover study with 16 weeks of each intervention (45 g of walnuts or iso-caloric white bread) with a 6 week washout period between interventions. Korean adults with MetS (n = 119) were randomly assigned to one of two sequences; 84 subjects completed the trial. At each clinic visit (at 0, 16, 22, and 38 weeks), MetS components, metabolic parameters including lipid profile, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), adiponectin, leptin, and apolipoprotein B, as well as anthropometric and bioimpedance data were obtained. RESULTS: Daily walnut consumption for 16 weeks improved MetS status, resulting in 28.6%-52.8% reversion rates for individual MetS components and 51.2% of participants with MetS at baseline reverted to a normal status after the walnut intervention. Significant improvements after walnut intake, compared to control intervention, in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (P = 0.028), fasting glucose (P = 0.013), HbA1c (P = 0.021), and adiponectin (P = 0.019) were observed after adjustment for gender, age, body mass index, and sequence using a linear mixed model. CONCLUSION: A dietary supplement of 45 g of walnuts for 16 weeks favorably changed MetS status by increasing the concentration of HDL-C and decreasing fasting glucose level. Furthermore, consuming walnuts on a daily basis changed HbA1c and circulating adiponectin levels among the subjects with MetS. This trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03267901.