• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.14
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• pp.5941-5944
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• 2014

Purpose: To highlight the potential factors that could predict the response rate of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) treated with pemetrexed combined chemotherapy after first- or second-line chemotherapy using the FOLFOX regimen. Materials and Methods: Between January 2007 and July 2014, 54 patients diagnosed and pathologically-confirmed with advanced colorectal cancer in Jiangsu Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, were enrolled. They received pemetrexed at a dose of $500mg/m^2$ by 10 minute infusion on day 1, repeated every 3 weeks. Doses were modified depending on nadir counts of blood cells. Combined chemotherapeutic agents included irinotecan, lobaplatin, carboplatin, oxaliplatin, gemcitabine, cis-platinum or bevacizumab. Multiple variables (age, sex, hemoglobin, platinum drugs combined, metastasis sites, LDH, ALP, CEA>40 ug/ml) reported earlier were selected. We used logistic regression analysis to evaluate relationships between these and tumor response. Results: On multivariable analysis, we found that age was significant in predicting the responsiveness to pemetrexed (p<0.05) combined with oxaliplatin. We did not find any other factors which were significantly associated with the response rate to chemotherapy with pemetrexed and irinotecan. Conclusions: By multivariate analysis, we found that age had significant impact on the responsiveness of pemetrexed when combined with oxaliplatin. Additional research based on genomic properties of host and tumors are needed to clarify markers for better selection of patients who could benefit from pemetrexed combined chemotherapy.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.125-135
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• 2016

Helicobacter pylori is a Gram-negative bacteria that is responsible for gastritis in human. Its spiral flagellated body helps in locomotion and colonization in the host environment. It is capable of living in the highly acidic environment of the stomach with the help of acid adaptive genes. The genome of H. pylori 26695 strain contains 1,555 coding genes that encode 1,445 proteins. Out of these, 340 proteins are characterized as hypothetical proteins (HP). This study involves extensive analysis of the HPs using an established pipeline which comprises various bioinformatics tools and databases to find out probable functions of the HPs and identification of virulence factors. After extensive analysis of all the 340 HPs, we found that 104 HPs are showing characteristic similarities with the proteins with known functions. Thus, on the basis of such similarities, we assigned probable functions to 104 HPs with high confidence and precision. All the predicted HPs contain representative members of diverse functional classes of proteins such as enzymes, transporters, binding proteins, regulatory proteins, proteins involved in cellular processes and other proteins with miscellaneous functions. Therefore, we classified 104 HPs into aforementioned functional groups. During the virulence factors analysis of the HPs, we found 11 HPs are showing significant virulence. The identification of virulence proteins with the help their predicted functions may pave the way for drug target estimation and development of effective drug to counter the activity of that protein.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.342-351
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• 2021

Liver colonization is initiated through the interplay between tumor cells and adhesion molecules present in liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs). This crosstalk stimulates tumor COX-2 upregulation and PGE2 secretion. To elucidate the role of the LSEC intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) in the prometastatic response exerted by tumor and stromal COX-2, we utilized celecoxib (CLX) as a COX-2 inhibitory agent. We analyzed the in vitro proliferative and secretory responses of murine C26 colorectal cancer (CRC) cells to soluble ICAM-1 (sICAM-1), cultured alone or with LSECs, and their effect on LSEC and hepatic stellate cell (HSC) migration and in vivo liver metastasis. CLX reduced sICAM-1-stimulated COX-2 activation and PGE2 secretion in C26 cells cultured alone or cocultured with LSECs. Moreover, CLX abrogated sICAM-1-induced C26 cell proliferation and C26 secretion of promigratory factors for LSECs and HSCs. Interestingly, CLX reduced the protumoral response of HSC, reducing their migratory potential when stimulated with C26 secretomes and impairing their secretion of chemotactic factors for LSECs and C26 cells and proliferative factors for C26 cells. In vivo, CLX abrogated the prometastatic ability of sICAM-1-activated C26 cells while reducing liver metastasis. COX-2 inhibition blocked the creation of a favorable tumor microenvironment (TME) by hindering the intratumoral recruitment of activated HSCs and macrophages in addition to the accumulation of fibrillar collagen. These results point to COX-2 being a key modulator of processes initiated by host ICAM-1 during tumor cell/LSEC/HSC crosstalk, leading to the creation of a prometastatic TME in the liver.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.228-238
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• 2023

Intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) is a serious concern for preterm infants and can predispose such infants to brain injury and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes. IVH is particularly common in preterm infants. Although advances in obstetric management and neonatal care have led to a lower mortality rate for preterm infants with IVH, the IVH-related morbidity rate in this population remains high. Therefore, the present review investigated the pathophysiology of IVH and the evidence related to interventions for prevention. The analysis of the pathophysiology of IVH was conducted with a focus on the factors associated with cerebral hemodynamics, vulnerabilities in the structure of cerebral vessels, and host or genetic predisposing factors. The findings presented in the literature indicate that fluctuations in cerebral blood flow, the presence of hemodynamic significant patent ductus arteriosus, arterial carbon dioxide tension, and impaired cerebral venous drainage; a vulnerable or fragile capillary network; and a genetic variant associated with a mechanism underlying IVH development may lead to preterm infants developing IVH. Therefore, strategies focused on antenatal management, such as routine corticosteroid administration and magnesium sulfate use; perinatal management, such as maternal transfer to a specialized center; and postnatal management, including pharmacological agent administration and circulatory management involving prevention of extreme blood pressure, hemodynamic significant patent ductus arteriosus management, and optimization of cardiac function, can lower the likelihood of IVH development in preterm infants. Incorporating neuroprotective care bundles into routine care for such infants may also reduce the likelihood of IVH development. The findings regarding the pathogenesis of IVH further indicate that cerebrovascular status and systemic hemodynamic changes must be analyzed and monitored in preterm infants and that individualized management strategies must be developed with consideration of the risk factors for and physiological status of each preterm infant.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.99-113
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• 2004

Problems and current situation of public health globally and domestically were analyzed in this study and based on these findings, ways to improve from western medicine and Oriental medicine can be deduced as follows: 1. Current problems of public health in Korea and the world 1) Increase of diseases resulted from daily habits and infectious diseases, many are at the brink of being ill. Quality of life from extended life span and unbalanced health care must be solved. 2) Natural and societal factors including host factors, public health service, and other external and internal factors play an important role in deciding healthy and being ill. 3) Some of the limits and problems of modem medicine include insufficient academic knowledge and incomplete theory, as well as misled approach to the treatment. Human itself isn't perfect organism and other realistic problems hinder one's well-being. 4) Regardless of western medicine or Oriental medicine, patients were approached as someone with diseases and disorders, and wholistic approach was disregarded. Lack of clinical training, absence of clear educational philosophy and goal are some of the reasons why the education isn't under concrete system 2. Important factors for the medical education and proper direction for the education of Oriental medicine 1) Important factors for medical education - Education should not be limited on the human health and illness, but also cover qualities such as well-being, social welfare, service, and happiness. Every aspects of human life must be considered and attended for more productive outcome. - Basic understanding of humanity must be included in the educational curriculum - Foundation of human diseases and pain are associated with inner life and surrounding causes including family, society, nature, race, culture, religion, politics, and etc., thus the education must be approached to recognize aforementioned criteria. 2) Proper direction for the education of Oriental medicine - Values of Oriental medicine for medical principles and importance of lifehood must be educated. - Educational goal, limits, and levels must be established for the school of Oriental medicine - Respect for life must be the top priorities of educational direction which should lead to solution based education for the human health. Latest medical theory and technology should be accommodated as well as prevention, treatment, and balancing of basic courses and clinical training for optimal education.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.14 no.1_spc
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• pp.319-348
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• 2008

Self-efficacy, achievement goals, task value, and attribution are some of the representative motivation constructs that explain adolescents' cognition, affect, and behavioral patterns in achievement settings. These constructs have won researchers' recognition by demonstrating explanatory and predictive utility that transcends various social and cultural milieus learners are exposed to. Korean adolescents' motivation is generally in line with this universal trend and can be described adequately with these constructs. Nonetheless, there also exist a host of indigenous factors that shape these motivation constructs to be uniquely Korean. The purpose of the present article was to explore some of the socio-cultural factors that appear to wield particularly determining effects on Korean adolescents' academic motivation. Review of the relevant literature identified interdependent self-construal, traditional morals of filial piety, familism, educational fervor, academic elitism, and the college entrance system as important cultural, social, and policy-related such factors. Also discussed in this article were the roles of these factors in creating more immediate psychological learning environments for Korean adolescents, such as parent-child relationships, teacher-student relationships, and classroom goal structures.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.164-170
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• 2011

Amanita hemibapha is a kind of mycorrhizal mushroom which has a relation with host plants and environmental factors. For the purpose of studying the relationship between environmental factors and mushrooms, in this study we conducted to investigate the soil physicochemical properties, the distribution of plants and the diversity of mushrooms in Gwangyang, Chungdo and Daegu. Soil texture in habitate of Amanita hemibapha was Sandy Loam and Sandy Clay Loam which contains a high rate of sand. Soil pH was approximately 5.0 in all study sites. Total nitrogen contents, C/N ratio and available phosphate($P_2O_5$) were the highest at the Chungdo. However, Gwangyang and Chungdo represent similar Cation Exchange Capacity(C.E.C) and Daegu has much less than other areas. Exchangeable cations, $Ca^{2+}$ content was higher at Gwangyang and Chungdo than Daegu and $Na^+$ content was the highest at Chungdo among three sites. Daegu has much $Mg^{2+}$ contents followed by Chungdo and Gwangyang. Interestingly, $K^+$ content listed in reverse order of $Mg^{2+}$ at Gwangyang, Chungdo and Daegu. The main woody plants in study sites are confirmed as Carpinus laxiflora, Quercus mongolica, Q. serrata and Pinus densiflora. Quercus species are found as a common species in three study sites. Lastly, 8 family and 12 species of mushrooms are emerged in Gwangyang, also 8 family and 12 species and 5 family and 10 species are found in Chungdo and Daegu, respectively. Amanita pantherina, Boletus edulis, Tylopilus felleus and Marasmius maximus, which found in study sites, are also kind of mycorrhizal mushroom same as A. hemibaph. By using correspondence analysis, Q. mongolica, Q. serrata, Q. variabilis and C. laxiflora are expected to as a host plant of A. hemibapha.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.136-144
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• 2014

The existing conventional motion controller does not perform well in the presence of nonlinear properties, uncertain factors, and servo lag phenomena of industrial actuators. Hence, a feasible and effective fuzzy self-tuning proportional integral derivative (PID) and feed-forward control scheme is introduced to overcome these problems. In this design, a fuzzy tuner is used to tune the PID parameters resulting in the rejection of the disturbance, which achieves better performance. Then, both velocity and acceleration feed-forward units are added to considerably reduce the tracking error due to servo lag. To verify the capability and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme, the hardware configuration includes digital signal processing (DSP) which plays the main role, dual-port RAM (DPRAM) to guarantee rapid and reliable communication with the host, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to handle the task of the address decoder and receive the feed-back encoder signal, and several peripheral logic circuits. The results from the experiments show that the proposed motion controller has a smooth profile, with high tracking precision and real-time performance, which are applicable in various manufacturing fields.

• Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2012

The West Stone Pagoda at Gameunsaji Temple Site constructed in the 7th century is mainly composed of dark grey dacitic tuff bearing small numerous dioritic xenoliths. These xenoliths resulted in small holes due to differential weathering process from the host rocks. Physical strength of the pagoda was decreased due to weathering and damage caused by petrological, biological and coastal environmental factors. The southeastern part of the pagoda was extremely deteriorated that the rock surface showed exfoliation, fracture, open cavity, granular decomposition of minerals and salt crystallization by seawater spray from the eastern coast. The stone blocks were intersected by numerous cracks and contaminated by subsequent material such as cement mortar and iron plates. Also, the pagoda was colonized by algae, fungi, lichen and bryophytes on the roof rock surface and the gaps between the blocks. As a result of ultrasonic test, the rock materials fell under Highly Weathered Grade (HW) or Completely Weathered Grade (CW). Thus, conservational intervention is essentially required to prevent further weakening of the rock materials.