• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.23
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• pp.10483-10487
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• 2015

Heptaphylline derivatives are carbazoles in Clausena harmandiana, a medicinal plant that is utilized for headache, stomach ache, and other treatments of illness. The present study examined the effects of heptaphylline and 7-methoxyheptaphylline on apoptosis of human colon adenocarcinoma cells (HT-29 cell line). Quantification of cell viability was performed using cell proliferation assay (MTT assay) and of protein expression through immunoblotting. The results showed that only heptaphylline, but not 7-methoxyheptaphylline, significantly significantly activated cleaved of caspase-3 and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP-1) which resulted in HT-29 cell death. We found that heptaphylline activated BH3 interacting-domain death agonist (Bid) and Bak, proapoptotic proteins. In contrast, it suppressed X-linked inhibitor-of-apoptosis protein (XIAP), Bcl-xL and survivin, inhibitors of apoptosis. In addition, heptaphylline inhibited activation of NF-${\kappa}B$/p65 (rel), a regulator of apoptotic regulating proteins by suppressing the activation of Akt and $IKK{\alpha}$, upstream regulators of p65. The findings suggested that heptaphylline induces apoptosis in human colon adenocarcinoma cells.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.461-487
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• 2015

In recent years, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has become a competitive computing technology in comparison with the standard Central Processing Unit (CPU) technology due to reduced unit cost, energy and computing time. This paper describes the derivation and implementation of GPU-based algorithms for the analysis of wind loading uncertainty on high-rise systems, in line with the research field of probability-based wind engineering. The study begins by presenting an application of the GPU technology to basic linear algebra problems to demonstrate advantages and limitations. Subsequently, Monte-Carlo integration and synthetic generation of wind turbulence are examined. Finally, the GPU architecture is used for the dynamic analysis of three high-rise structural systems under uncertain wind loads. In the first example the fragility analysis of a single degree-of-freedom structure is illustrated. Since fragility analysis employs sampling-based Monte Carlo simulation, it is feasible to distribute the evaluation of different random parameters among different GPU threads and to compute the results in parallel. In the second case the fragility analysis is carried out on a continuum structure, i.e., a tall building, in which double integration is required to evaluate the generalized turbulent wind load and the dynamic response in the frequency domain. The third example examines the computation of the generalized coupled wind load and response on a tall building in both along-wind and cross-wind directions. It is concluded that the GPU can perform computational tasks on average 10 times faster than the CPU.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.501-510
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• 2019

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common cause of chronic liver disease in children. The global prevalence of pediatric NAFLD from general populations is 7.6%. In obese children, the prevalence is higher in Asia. NAFLD has a strong heritable component based on ethnic difference in the prevalence and clustering within families. Genetic polymorphisms of patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 (PNPLA3), transmembrane 6 superfamily member 2, and glucokinase regulatory protein (GCKR) are associated with the risk of NAFLD in children. Variants of PNPLA3 and GCKR are more common in Asians. Alterations of the gut microbiome might contribute to the pathogenesis of NAFLD. High fructose intake increases the risk of NAFLD. Liver fibrosis is a poor prognostic factor for disease progression to cirrhosis. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy and magnetic resonance proton density fat fraction are more accurate for steatosis quantification than ultrasound. Noninvasive imaging methods to assess liver fibrosis, such as transient elastography, shear-wave elastography, and magnetic resonance elastography are useful in predicting advanced fibrosis, but they need further validation. Longitudinal follow-up studies into adulthood are needed to better understand the natural history of pediatric NAFLD.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.109-124
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• 2000

For rational human value judgement and evaluation, provision of clear evaluation data, objective value judgement criteria, and properly generalized methods are required. For instance, this is true for software quality evaluation, and the measure of software quality and the weighting method of evaluation target directly affect final decisions. However it is not easy to find a generalized method for the software quality evaluation or product selection, because of its complex characteristics. In this paper, we apply the qualitative preference method based on quantitative belief functions to find a general weighing method for the software quality evaluation. In particular, the qualitative preference method, in which the differentiated preference expression is possible, is conceptually expanded for general applications in future. For this purpose, we hierarchically differentiate the strong preference relation from the weak preference relation, and show an example of quantification of software quality evaluation on different applications, by comparing the qualitative preference method with AHP. We believe that the application domain of this method is not limited to the software quality evaluation and it is very useful to apply this results to other SE areas, e.g., metric selection with different views and riority determination of practices to be assessed in the SPICE.

• Journal of KSNVE
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.542-552
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• 1998

The noise sources, structure-borne and/or air-borne, in machinery can be defined by their locations and strengths. However the locations of that noise sources are well known in many cases. In those cases, the problem can be defined as an inverse problem to known the strengths of the noise sources in the frequency domain, the modeling scheme is classified by thecoherent or incoherent source. This paper expands the basic concept to the case of the complex noise sources, in which the set of coherent and incoherent noise sources are matched with the noise of a real vehicle. The error factors in the experiment and the optimal number of the monopole sources to match the real suond filed are also investigated. The results of the noise source modeling of heavy machinery show that the incoherent and coherent/incoherent source models are applicable to the high frequency and the low frequency region, respectively. The noise source model also enables the noise source analysis to rank the contribution of real source group such as engine, T/M, exhuast, etc.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• summer
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• pp.92-96
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• 2004

The researches of the emotions are currently great interest in speech processing as well as in human-machine interaction domain. In the recent years, more and more of researches relating to emotion synthesis or emotion recognition are developed for the different purposes. Each approach uses its methods and its various parameters measured on the speech signal. In this paper, we proposed using a short-time parameter: MFCC coefficients (Mel­Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients) and a simple but efficient classifying method: Vector Quantification (VQ) for speaker-dependent emotion recognition. Many other features: energy, pitch, zero crossing, phonetic rate, LPC... and their derivatives are also tested and combined with MFCC coefficients in order to find the best combination. The other models: GMM and HMM (Discrete and Continuous Hidden Markov Model) are studied as well in the hope that the usage of continuous distribution and the temporal behaviour of this set of features will improve the quality of emotion recognition. The maximum accuracy recognizing five different emotions exceeds $88\%$ by using only MFCC coefficients with VQ model. This is a simple but efficient approach, the result is even much better than those obtained with the same database in human evaluation by listening and judging without returning permission nor comparison between sentences [8]; And this result is positively comparable with the other approaches.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.223-229
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• 2011

Cyclophilins are originally identified as cytosolic binding protein of the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine A. They have an activity of peptidyl prolyl cis/trans-isomerases (PPIase), which may play important roles in protein folding, trafficking, assembly and cell signaling. In this study, we report the cloning and characterization of a Bombyx mori cyclophilin A (bCypA) cDNA. The full-length cDNA of bCypA consist of 947 nucleotides with a polyadenylation signal sequence AATAAA and contain an open reading frame of 498 nucleotides encoding a polypeptide of 166 amino acids. The deduced amino acid sequence of bCypA shares a central peptidyl prolyl cis/trans-isomerase and a cyclosporin-A-binding domain with other cyclophilin sequences. Relative quantification real-time (RT) PCR analysis shows that mRNA transcripts of bCypA are detected in all the investigated tissues and highest expression level in the skin of 3-day-old 5 instar larva. Also, bCypA had PPIase activity on the proline-containing peptides. Accordingly, we suggest that bCypA is a new member of the cyclophilin A (CyPA) family and will be useful for quality control of bioactivity recombinant proteins with proline-containing peptides.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.4
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• pp.489-502
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• 2022

This paper is aimed at developing an optimization-based Finite Element model updating approach for structural damage identification and quantification. A modal flexibility-based error function is introduced, which uses modal assurance criterion to formulate the updating problem as an optimization problem. Because of the inexplicit input/output relationship between the candidate solutions and the error function's output, a robust and efficient optimization algorithm should be employed to evaluate the solution domain and find the global extremum with high speed and accuracy. This paper proposes a new multi-stage Selective Particle Swarm Optimization (SPSO) algorithm to solve the optimization problem. The proposed multi-stage strategy not only fixes the premature convergence of the original Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, but also increases the speed of the search stage and reduces the corresponding computational costs, without changing or adding extra terms to the algorithm's formulation. Solving the introduced objective function with the proposed multi-stage SPSO leads to a smart feedback-wise and self-adjusting damage detection method, which can effectively assess the health of the structural systems. The performance and precision of the proposed method are verified and benchmarked against the original PSO and some of its most popular variants, including SPSO, DPSO, APSO, and MSPSO. For this purpose, two numerical examples of complex civil engineering structures under different damage patterns are studied. Comparative studies are also carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in the presence of measurement errors. Moreover, the robustness and accuracy of the method are validated by assessing the health of a six-story shear-type building structure tested on a shake table. The obtained results introduced the proposed method as an effective and robust damage detection method even if the first few vibration modes are utilized to form the objective function.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.385-391
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• 2014

We use a scale mainly for quantification when we study the psychological characteristics that we cannot observe. The utilization of a scale is frequent in scientific educational studies. The convenience offered by Likert scale, which is among the most frequently used, enable us to grasp characteristic attitude or recognition in students, and evaluate them against an affective domain. But a lot of errors occur, and has been noted as well in the case of utilizing Likert scale in the process. A central tendency in the utilization of Likert scale appears in this study, and the trend analyzes according to study objects and study contents, but we intend to find a way to utilize Likert scale. The results of study made on our countryside students show that the answers tend to get concentrated and a central tendency appears. Our countryside students were aware of the eyes surroundings them, have respect for elders through social experiences, and have had troubles with differentiated expression or personality in the group and cultural environments. According to the object of study, the central tendency appears more among older students than younger students, more among general students than gifted students. In the contents of study, the central tendency has been given more appearance in scope and their exposure has relatively been in large domain. Therefore when utilizing Likert scale in scientific education study, an error of central tendency appears as if they are results of the study. So, when applying the Likert scale to scientific study, we need to consider sociocultural environment, characteristics of an object and contexts of study. This enables avoiding dependence on numerical value of the utilization results, and interpret them correctly.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.182-189
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• 2004

Objectives : The objective of this study is to compare the circadian patterns of heart rate variability assessed by 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings during day shift and night shift among the workers in the 5 days-concecutive-12-hour shift in an automobile factory in Korea. Methods : The study population consisted 300 workers, who were randomly selected among the 8700 total workers in one car factory. To analyse circadian variation, the 24-hour ECG recordings (Marquette) were measured during day shift (08:00-20:00 h) and night shift (20:00-08:00 h). Analysis was performed for all time and frequency domain measures of HRV. 233 workers completed taking 24-hour ECG recordings. Results : This study shows that the 24 hourcircadian variation mainly follows work/sleep cycle rather than day/night cycle among shift workers. This study also shows that among the night shift, the circadian variation between work and sleep cycle decreased compared to the work/sleep cycle among day shift workers. All time and frequency domain parameters (except LF/HF ratio) show significantly different between work and sleep in the day shift and night shift. Conclusion : These changes in heart rate variability circadian rhythms reflect significant reductions in cardiac parasympathetic activity with the most marked reduction in normal vagal activity among the shift workers. Especially, it suggests the circadian rhytm has blunted among the night workers. The quantification of the circadian variation in HRV can be a surrogates of workers' potential health risk, as well as suggests possible mechanisms through which the shift works compromise workers' health.