• Molecules and Cells
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• v.38 no.11
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• pp.959-965
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• 2015

Inducible and reversible gene silencing in desired types of cells is instrumental for deciphering gene functions using cultured cells or in vivo models. However, efficient conditional gene knockdown systems remain to be established. Here, we report the generation of an inducible expression system for short hairpin RNA (shRNA) targeted to PTEN, a well-documented dual-specificity phosphatase involved in tumor suppression and ontogenesis. Upon induction by doxycycline (DOX), the reverse tetracycline transcriptional activator (rtTA) switched on the concomitant expression of GFP and a miR-30 precursor, the subsequent processing of which released the embedded PTEN-targeted shRNA. The efficacy and reversibility of PTEN knockdown by this construct was validated in normal and neoplastic cells, in which PTEN deficiency resulted in accelerated cell proliferation, suppressed apoptosis, and increased invasiveness. Transgenic mice harboring the conditional shRNA-expression cassette were obtained; GFP expression and concurrent PTEN silencing were observed upon ectopic expression of rtTA and induction with Dox. Therefore, this study provides novel tools for the precise dissection of PTEN functions and the generation of PTEN loss of function models in specific subsets of cells during carcinogenesis and ontogenesis.

• Solar Energy
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.17-24
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• 2000

Thermal performance of a SAAHPS (Solar and Ambient-air-assisted Heat Pump System) located in KIER is simulated with TRNSYS 14.2. The SAAHPS is composed of dual evaorators, each of which is used as a solar fluid heat source and an air fluid heat source. Polynomial coefficients data for the SAAHPS is supplied with Frigosoft, a program widely used for heat pump modeling. In general, collector area and storage volume are 2 key parameters in SAAHPS thermal performance. A parametric study is performed in this study to assess sensitivity of collector area and storage volume in SAAHPS. We concluded that firstly collector area and storage volume are the primary variables in SAAHPS thermal performance, secondly COP of SAAHPS is higher than that of conventional heat pumps. Therefore. collector efficiency can be enhanced swith SAAHPS during a heating season.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-19
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• 2010

This study uses qualitative data to examine the dynamics and barriers of the delayed family formation phenomenon among the never-married professionals in Korea. The data was drawn from focus groups of 14 never-married professionals aged 28 through 40. The investigation depicts several dimensions of the circumstances of never-married professionals that have not garnered much attention in the literature. This research provides initial evidence of critical influences within the socio-cultural contexts of the participants' dating behaviors as well as the willingness to many. Two different realities, based on gender, were discovered: both male and female voluntarily delayed marriage to pursue their career, education and success. As both reached their career goals, however, male participants experienced a rise in their value as a marriage prospect whereas females experienced decreased value as a marriage prospect. Hence, neo-traditional familism was the dominant value among the participants, but it also functioned as a major barrier to family formation because in the present value system, female professionals, must still struggle with the dual burdens of work and family management.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.18 no.E3
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• pp.153-163
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• 2002

A laboratory- scale dual-column biofilter system was used to study the biofiltration of dimethyl disulfide (DMDS). The gas flow rate and DMDS concentration to the biofilter were varied to study their effect on the remov-al of dimethyl disulfide. Operating parameters such as pH, temperature, and water content were monitored during the biofilter operation and necessary precautions were taken to keep these parameters within the acceptable limits. It was observed that the removal efficiency of DMDS was optimal at neutral pH values. After five month op-eration, the neutralization of the filter beds with sodium carbonate became necessary for the optimum operation of the biofilters. The microbial population already present in the compost mixtures was found to be adequate in treat-ing DMDS. The compost mixtures were found to be similar in terms of biofiltration efficiency of DMDS. However, pressure drops observed in the first column compost mixture (compost/ peat mulch) was extremely high, making this compost economically not feasible. The second mixture (compost/bark) provided pressure drops within accept-able limits. A minimum residence time of 30 seconds at the optimal operating conditions appeared to be adequate for achieving high removal efficiencies (>90%).

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.146-150
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• 1999

As a part of the integrated disease system in greenhouse, an antifungal fungus(AF1) was isolated from greenhouse soil. It exhibited strong inhibitory activites against Pythium ultimum, Phytophtora capsici, Rhizoctonia solani, Botrytis cinerea, and Fusarium oxysporum based on dual culture on 1/5 strength of potato dextrose agar between antagonistic fungus and several plant pathogens. The antagonistic fungus was identified as Chaetomium cochliodes, based on morphological characteristics; the body of the perithecium bears straight or slightly wavy, unbranched hairs, whilst the apex bears a group of spirally coiled hairs. To investigate antagonistic principles, antifungal compound was extracted and fractionated by different solvent systems. An antifungal compound was isolated as pure crystal from is culture filtrate using organic solvent extraction and column chromatography, followed by preparative thin layer chromatography. The chemical structure of the purified antifungal compound was identified as chaetoglobosin A based on the data obtained form $^1H-NMR$, $^{13}C-NMR$, DEPT 90, 135, $^1H-^1H$ COSY, $^1H-^{13}C$ COSY and EI/MS. $ED_{50}$ values of the chaetoglobosin A against P. ultimum, P. capsici, R. solani, B. cinerea and F. oxysporum were 1.98, 4.01, 4.16, 2.67 and 35.14 ppm, respectively.

• Advances in Traditional Medicine
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2006

In order to study the effect of acupuncture stimulation on bone mineral density (BMD), using the ovariectomized (OVX) rat model, we assessed the degree of osteopenia by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, measured the level of locomotor activity using a metabolism measuring system, and performed histological studies of bone tissue. Twenty-four female Wistar rats (8 weeks old, 160 - 180 g)were divided into three groups. Rats in the OVX-A group underwent ovariectomy followed by acupuncture stimulation. The OVX rats in the Vehicle control group were not treated with acupuncture as a control. The rats in the control group received neither ovariectomy nor acupuncture. Acupuncture stimulation for 12 weeks in the OVX-A group inhibited the reduction in BMD of the femoral bones caused by ovariectomy. Moreover, in the two OVX groups, there was no clear difference in the level of locomotor activity between the active and resting phases prior to acupuncture stimulation in each rat, and the pattern of locomotor activity was irregular. After acupuncture stimulation of the OVX-A rats, the pattern of locomotor activity became diphasic with clear active and resting phases, as was observed in the Control group. On histological studies, the continuity of trabecular bone was maintained more favorably and bone mass was higher in the OVX-A group than in the vehicle control group. These results suggest that the increased locomotor activity that had been induced by acupuncture stimulation increased the BMD.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.384-390
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• 2015

There are two main artifacts in reconstructed images from in-beam positron emission tomography (PET). Unlike generic PET, in-beam PET uses the annihilation photons that occur during heavy ion therapy. Therefore, the geometry of in-beam PET is not a full ring, but a partial ring that has one or two openings around the rings in order for the hadrons to arrive at the tumor without prevention of detector blocks. This causes truncation in the projection data due to an absence of detector modules in the openings. The other is a ring artifact caused by the gaps between detector modules also found in generic PET. To sum up, in-beam PET has two kinds of gap: openings for hadrons, and gaps between the modules. We acquired three types of simulation results from a PET system: full-ring, C-ring and dual head. In this study, we aim to compensate for the artifacts that come from the two types of gap. In the case of truncation, we propose a method that uses prior knowledge of the location where annihilations occur, and we applied the discrete-cosine transform (DCT) gap-filling method proposed by Tuna et al. for inter-detector gap.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of IIIuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.183-187
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• 2008

This paper describes a power control scheme to improve the performance of a fuel cell battery hybrid power source for residential application. The proposed power control scheme includes a power control strategy to control the power flow of the fuel cell hybrid power system and a digital control technique for a front-end dc-dc converter of the fuel cell. The power control strategy enables the fuel cell to operate within the high efficiency region defined by the polarization curve and efficiency curve of the fuel cell. A dual boost converter with digital control is applied as a front-end dc-dc converter to control the fuel cell output power. The digital control technique of the converter employs a moving-average digital filter into its voltage feedback loop to cancel the low frequency harmonic current drawn from the fuel cell and then limits the fuel cell output current to a current limit using a predictive current limiter to keep the fuel cell operation within the high efficiency region as well as to minimize the fuel cell oxygen starvation.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.815-826
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• 2014

An improved bridgeless interleaved boost power factor correction (PFC) rectifier to improve power efficiency and component utilization is proposed in this study. With combined conventional bridgeless PFC circuit and interleaved technology, the proposed rectifier consists of two interleaved and magnetic inter-coupling boost bridgeless converter cells. Each cell operates alternatively in the critical conduction mode, which can achieve the soft-switching characteristics of the switches and increase power capacity. Auxiliary blocking diodes are employed to eliminate undesired circulating loops and reduce current-sensing noise, which are among the serious drawbacks of a dual-boost PFC rectifier. Magnetic component utilization is improved by symmetrically coupling two inductors on a unique core, which can achieve independence from each other based on the auxiliary diodes. Through the interleaved approach, each switch can operate in the whole line cycle. A simple control scheme is employed in the circuit by using a conventional interleaved controller. The operation principle and theoretical analysis of the converter are presented. A 600 W experimental prototype is built to verify the theoretical analysis and feasibility of the proposed rectifier. System efficiency reaches 97.3% with low total harmonic distortion at full load.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.360-366
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• 2011

In this paper, we investigate the problem of power allocation in a heterogeneous network that is composed of a pair of cognitive users (CUs) and an infrastructure-based primary network. Since CUs have only limited effective spectrum-sensing ability and primary users (PUs) are not active all the time in all locations and licensed bands, we set up a new multi-area model to characterize the heterogeneous network. A novel combined interference-avoidance policy corresponding to different PU-appearance situations is introduced to protect the primary network from unacceptable disturbance and to increase the spectrum secondary-reuse efficiency. We use dual decomposition to transform the original power allocation problem into a two-layer optimization problem. We propose a low-complexity joint power-optimizing method to maximize the transmission rate between CUs, taking into account both the individual power-transmission constraints and the combined interference power constraint of the PUs. Numerical results show that for various values of the system parameters, the proposed joint optimization method with combined PU protection is significantly better than the opportunistic spectrum access mode and other heuristic approaches.