• Toxicological Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.253-259
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• 2011

Transforming growth factor ${\beta}$ (TGF-${\beta}$) is involved in cellular processes including growth, differentiation, apoptosis, migration, and homeostasis. Generally, TGF-${\beta}$ is the inhibitor of cell cycle progression and plays a role in enhancing the antagonistic effects of many growth factors. Unlike the antiproliferative effect of TGF-${\beta}$, E2, an endogeneous estrogen, is stimulating cell proliferation in the estrogen-dependent organs, which are mediated via the estrogen receptors, $ER{\alpha}$ and $ER{\beta}$, and may be considered as a critical risk factor in tumorigenesis of hormone-responsive cancers. Previous researches reported the cross-talk between estrogen/$ER{\alpha}$ and TGF-${\beta}$ pathway. Especially, based on the E2-mediated inhibition of TGF-${\beta}$ signaling, we examined the inhibition effect of 4-tert-octylphenol (OP) and 4-nonylphenol (NP), which are well known xenoestrogens in endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), on TGF-${\beta}$ signaling via semi-quantitative reverse-transcription PCR. The treatment of E2, OP, or NP resulted in the downregulation of TGF-${\beta}$ receptor2 (TGF-${\beta}$ R2) in TGF-${\beta}$ signaling pathway. However, the expression level of TGF-${\beta}1$ and TGF-${\beta}$ receptor1 (TGF-${\beta}$ R1) genes was not altered. On the other hand, E2, OP, or NP upregulated the expression of a cell-cycle regulating gene, c-myc, which is a oncogene and a downstream target gene of TGF-${\beta}$ signaling pathway. As a result of downregulation of TGF-${\beta}$ R2 and the upregulation of c-myc, E2, OP, or NP increased cell proliferation of BG-1 ovarian cancer cells. Taken together, these results suggest that E2 and these two EDCs may mediate cancer cell proliferation by inhibiting TGF-${\beta}$ signaling via the downregulation of TGF-${\beta}$ R2 and the upregulation of c-myc oncogene. In addition, it can be inferred that these EDCs have the possibility of tumorigenesis in estrogen-responsive organs by certainly representing estrogenic effect in inhibiting TGF-${\beta}$ signaling.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.3887-3896
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• 2011

This study was intended to measure the level of psychosocial stress among nurses working for a university hospital and to reveal its related factors. The self-administered questionnaires were given to 450 nurses during the period from October 1st to 31st, 2010. As a results, the level of psychosocial stress was 10.2% in normal group, 64.0% in potential stresses group, and 25.8% in high risk stress group. In correlation, psychosocial stress was positively correlated with job demand, but it was negatively correlated with job autonomy, supervisor and colleague support. For the results of hierarchial multiple regression analysis, the level of psychosocial stress was influenced by the variables of regular exercise, quality of sleep, subjective status of health, shift work, fit to the job, job demand, job autonomy and supervisor support. Especially, the psychosocial stress was higher related with the contents of job stress increased with explanatory powers of 18.1% on the psychosocial stress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.36
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• pp.101-132
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• 2011

Using data collected from Korean mothers (N＝429) with preschool children (aged 3 to 5 years) in 12 day care centers in Seoul, this study aims to empirically demonstrate the different pathways acute and chronic stress affect parenting efficacy of mothers according to the income group to which they belong. Analytic results show mothers in the low-income group show higher levels of depressive symptoms than mothers in the middle-income group, and the former also show more frequent and higher levels of acute and chronic stress than the latter. The mediation model results show that acute stress and chronic stress did not directly affect parenting efficacy, but rather indirectly affect parenting efficacy through maternal depressive symptoms. Acute stress and chronic stress are both significant factors affecting depressive symptoms with chronic stress exerting greater influence. When the total effect was analyzed, chronic stress has a greater effect on parenting efficacy than acute stress. The effect of chronic stress on maternal depressive symptoms is greater on low-income mothers than middle-income mothers, while the effect of acute stress on maternal depressive symptoms and the effect of those symptoms on parenting efficacy are greater on middle class families than low-income families. In order to maximize effective parenting in high-risk situations, the psychological welfare of mothers needs to be protected from the environmental difficulties they face. Based on the results, policies to support women and parents at the national and social levels are discussed.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.345-364
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• 2021

Developments in the understanding of fire behaviour for large open-plan spaces typical of tall buildings have been greatly outpaced by the rate at which these buildings are being constructed and their characteristics changed. Numerous high-profile fire-induced failures have highlighted the inadequacy of existing tools and standards for fire engineering when applied to highly-optimised modern tall buildings. With the continued increase in height and complexity of tall buildings, the risk to the occupants from fire-induced structural collapse increases, thus understanding the performance of complex structural systems under fire exposure is imperative. Therefore, an accurate representation of the design fire for open-plan compartments is required for the purposes of design. This will allow for knowledge-driven, quantifiable factors of safety to be used in the design of highly optimised modern tall buildings. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art experimental research on large open-plan compartment fires from the past three decades. We have assimilated results collected from 37 large-scale compartment fire experiments of the open-plan type conducted from 1993 to 2019, covering a range of compartment and fuel characteristics. Spatial and temporal distributions of the heat fluxes imposed on compartment ceilings are estimated from the data. The complexity of the compartment fire dynamics is highlighted by the large differences in the data collected, which currently complicates the development of engineering tools based on physical models. Despite the large variability, this analysis shows that the orders of magnitude of the thermal exposure are defined by the ratio of flame spread and burnout front velocities (V_S / V_BO), which enables the grouping of open-plan compartment fires into three distinct modes of fire spread. Each mode is found to exhibit a characteristic order of magnitude and temporal distribution of thermal exposure. The results show that the magnitude of the thermal exposure for each mode are not consistent with existing performance-based design models, nevertheless, our analysis offers a new pathway for defining thermal exposure from realistic fire scenarios in large open-plan compartments.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.341-357
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• 2019

Acanthamoeba, one of free-living amoebae (FLA), remains a high risk of direct contact with this protozoan parasite which is ubiquitous in nature and man-made environment. This pathogenic FLA can cause sight-threatening amoebic keratitis (AK) and fatal granulomatous amoebic encephalitis (GAE) though these cases may not commonly be reported in our clinical settings. Acanthamoeba has been detected from different environmental sources namely; soil, water, hotspring, swimming pool, air-conditioner, or contact lens storage cases. The identification of Acanthamoeba is based on morphological appearance and molecular techniques using PCR and DNA sequencing for clinico-epidemiological purposes. Recent treatments have long been ineffective against Acanthamoeba cyst, novel anti-Acanthamoeba agents have therefore been extensively investigated. There are efforts to utilize synthetic chemicals, lead compounds from medicinal plant extracts, and animal products to combat Acanthamoeba infection. Applied nanotechnology, an advanced technology, has shown to enhance the anti-Acanthamoeba activity in the encapsulated nanoparticles leading to new therapeutic options. This review attempts to provide an overview of the available data and studies on the occurrence of pathogenic Acanthamoeba among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members with the aim of identifying some potential contributing factors such as distribution, demographic profile of the patients, possible source of the parasite, mode of transmission and treatment. Further, this review attempts to provide future direction for prevention and control of the Acanthamoeba infection.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1105-1123
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• 2018

The main risk factors of tunnel excavation through urban areas are ground settlement and surface sink which caused by ground conditions, excavation method, groundwater condition, excavation length, support method, etc. In the process of ground settlement assessment, the numerical analysis should be conducted considering the displacement and stress due to tunnel excavation. Therefore a technique that can simplify such process and easily evaluate the influence of tunnel excavation is needed. This study focused on the tunnelling-induced ground settlement which is main consideration of underground safety impact assessment. The parametric numerical analyses were performed considering such parameters as ground conditions, tunnel depth, and lateral distance from tunnel center line, etc. A simplified ground settlement evaluation chart was suggested by analyzing tendency of ground subsidence, lateral influence area and character by depth. The applicability of the suggested settlement evaluation chart was verified by comparative numerical analysis of settlement characteristics.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.105-114
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• 2019

Recently, the paradigm of road policy has been focused on user safety. Recently, the number of road facility improvement project has been continuously increased but the economic feasibility (B/C ratio) is insufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to select a reasonable road improvement project through accurate and objective analysis of the road safety evaluation. In this study, to develop a new road safety evaluation method, data were collected based on the current road safety evaluation method for 75 routes including national roads and provincial ones. Based on the collected data, problems were analyzed and utilized as the basic factors of the new road safety evaluation method. Therefore, in this study, traffic accidents were reflected as a general evaluation item by weighing to solve these problems, and the evaluation items were added from experiences and ideas of the local public officials. For each evaluation item, a reasonable weight was determined through AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) questionnaire evaluation with highway experts. In addition, the safety index was determined based on the evaluation criteria for each evaluation item. The criteria for evaluating the danger zone are determined by the overall safety index. Finally, the criteria for selection of road improvement projects based on the overall risk level were derived.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.150-171
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• 2013

The most important part of conservation treatment of murals is to preserve them against the risk of a damage by injecting fixative into them when the painting loses its cohesion or powderization of pigments occurred due to occurrence of cracks inside the painting layer. However, studies on the stability of fixative used for painting layers of murals are still insufficient. This study manufactured a mural as a specimen and colored it with four kinds of pigments including oyster shell white, cinnabar, malachite and red clay and applied four kinds of fixative, including, Paraloid $B-72^{(R)}$, Caparol-$binder^{(R)}$, glue and Hydoxypropyl $cellulose^{(R)}$. artificially generated environmental changes in temperature, humidity and ultraviolet rays which may occur after the completion of conservation treatment. Then the changes in physical properties were observed in multifaceted ways such as color stability, contact angle, brilliance, adhesive strength and surface. As a result, this study found that ultraviolet rays and hot?humid environment have a large impact on color stability causing changes in brightness and chroma of all painting layers where the fixative were applied, except for oyster shell white and are considered the main factors of decomposition by accelerating the aging process of fixatives applied. In comparison to the synthetic resins that were also tested in this study, the traditional glue showed satisfactory results in terms of color stability and influence preservation and the hydrophile property. As it showed exceptionally outstanding adhesive strength in all painting layers in the aspect of adhesive strength, it is considered to be highly stabile for the fixation treatment of painting layers of mural.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.305-316
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• 2021

Construction accidents occur due to a number of reasons-worker carelessness, non-adoption of safety equipment, and failure to comply with safety rules are some examples. Because much construction work is done outdoors, weather conditions can also be a factor in accidents. Past construction accident data are useful for accident prevention, but since construction accident data are often in a text format consisting of natural language, extracting construction hazards from construction accident data can take a lot of time and that entails extra cost. Therefore, in this study, we extracted construction hazards from 2,026 domestic construction accident reports using text mining and performed a seasonal analysis of construction hazards through frequency analysis and centrality analysis. Of the 254 construction hazards defined by Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, we extracted 51 risk factors from the construction accident data. The results showed that a significant hazard was "Formwork" in spring and autumn, "Scaffold" in summer, and "Crane" in winter. The proposed method would enable construction safety managers to prepare better safety measures against outdoor construction accidents according to weather, season, and climate.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1-12
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• 2021

In this paper, we study empirically examined the adventurous investments in corporate venture capital (CVC) firms' investment in the U.S. based corporate venture capital industry. Unlike existing studies focusing CVC firm's characteristics related to parent corporates and regarding CVC firm as a vehicle of corporate venturing, we identified CVC firm as an independent learning agent to adapt to dynamic environment and investigate their exploration and exploitation in investments based on organizational learning theory. Specifically, we investigate the market-environmental factors affecting CVC's adventurous investment in different sector rather than previously done. First, we examined competition intensity in CVC industry might be related to CVC firm's explorative investments. Second, CVC firm's investment experiences might affect as an inertia to invest on unexperienced sector. Finally, we investigated risk preference effect on CVC firm's venturing investments. The empirical data analyzed in the study contained a total of 85 U.S. based CVC firms and their 2,306 investments from 1996 until 2017. After conducting a GEE regression analysis and a Logit regression analysis, we found the significance and direction of our independent and moderating variables strongly supported all of our four hypotheses in a highly robust manner.