• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.171-177
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• 2015

A telerobot offers a more engaging and enjoyable interaction with people at a distance by communicating via audio, video, expressive gestures, body pose and proxemics. To provide its potential benefits at a reasonable cost, this paper presents a telepresence robot system for video communication which can deliver speaker's head motion through its display stanchion. Head gestures such as nodding and head-shaking can give crucial information during conversation. We also can assume a speaker's eye-gaze, which is known as one of the key non-verbal signals for interaction, from his/her head pose. In order to develop an efficient head tracking method, a 3D cylinder-like head model is employed and the Harris corner detector is combined with the Lucas-Kanade optical flow that is known to be suitable for extracting 3D motion information of the model. Especially, a skin color-based face detection algorithm is proposed to achieve robust performance upon variant directions while maintaining reasonable computational cost. The performance of the proposed head tracking algorithm is verified through the experiments using BU's standard data sets. A design of robot platform is also described as well as the design of supporting systems such as video transmission and robot control interfaces.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2013

Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent non-skin related cancers. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among males in most Western countries. If prostate cancer is diagnosed in its early stages, there is a higher probability that it will be completely cured. Prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) is a non-specific phosphomonoesterase synthesized in prostate epithelial cells and its level proportionally increases with prostate cancer progression. PAP was the biochemical diagnostic mainstay for prostate cancer until the introduction of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) which improved the detection of early-stage prostate cancer and largely displaced PAP. Recently, however, there is a renewed interest in PAP because of its usefulness in prognosticating intermediate to high-risk prostate cancers and its success in the immunotherapy of prostate cancer. Although PAP is believed to be a key regulator of prostate cell growth, its exact role in normal prostate as well as detailed molecular mechanism of PAP regulation is still unclear. Here, many different aspects of PAP in prostate cancer are revisited and its emerging roles in other environment are discussed.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Pathology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 1998

It has been known that $\gamma$-irradiation usually induces cell death in regenerating stem cell in normal tissues like skin, intestine and hematopoietic organ. The experiment were carried out to evaluate the early response of radiation injury in radiosensitive and intermediate radiosensitive tissues in feeding and starving rats with the doses of 3.5 and 7.0 Gy. The results of the study showed that the histological phenomenon was apoptosis in the doses of the radiation as the early response of tissue injury. Apoptosis were showed organ-specific and cellular specific responses suggesting that the selection of apoptosis be exactly focused on highly renewal organs and cells. It was interesting that the rats starved for 72 hours prior to irradiation induced less apoptosis in liver than fed rats. As for cellular responses it appeared that apoptotic cells were mostly distributed in ductal or periportal cells in liver of feeding rats unlikely in liver of Starving rots which showed no difference in zonal distribution. In salivary gland apoptotic cells in fed rats were highly induced in intercalating and ductal cell population than in acinar cell population although unlikely in starved rats. This study showed the value of apoptosis using the detection system of TUNEL for evaluating cellular damage after radiation injury and the diminished effect of starvation on cell damage after ionizing irradiation.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.406-411
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• 2013

Rumex crispus (Curled Dock, Polygonaceae) is a perennial wild plant used in traditional medicine as a laxative, astringent, and to treat blood and skin disease. The ethanol extract of R. crispus was obtained and its carbohydrate contents were analyzed using high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection. The anabolic effects of R. crispus in human osteoblastic MG-63 cells were investigated using the WST-8 assay, alkalinephosphatase (ALP) assay, and mineralization assay. The ethanol extract increased the proliferation of MG-63 cells and stimulated ALP activity in a dose-dependent manner over a 72-hrs period. Additionally, the ethanol extract dose-dependently stimulated the formation of bone nodules in MG-63 cells treated for 12 days. The ethyl acetate fraction from the ethanol extract did not affect osteoblast viability but induced an increase in ALP activity. In conclusion, the ethanol extract of R. crispus increases the proliferation and bone-forming activity of osteoblasts, and hence it could be used in the development of bone-forming stimulatory nutraceuticals and osteoporosis-related medicines.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.159-181
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• 2010

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to introduce and examine the possibilities of infrared (IR) imaging, biophoton detection and gas discharge visualization(GDV) as diagnostic tools in Korean Medicine. Methods : To review the basic mechanism and measurement methods of three modalities, concepts in physics were introduced. Physical backgrounds of IR, biophoton and GDV were briefly explained based on recent research papers. Simple electronics was employed for relevant detectors. In order to find the relation between Korean Medicine and these methods, papers on their applications were reviewed. Opinions from the experts on each modality were obtained from their papers and private communications. Results and Conclusions : IR imaging has been used as an auxiliary diagnostic tool but there are some rooms for the improvement for clinical applications. Experimental confirmation of the meridian activation by a moxa cigar is necessary for its verification. Biophoton is not correlated with human skin temperature but it has a circadian rhythm. Biophoton and GDV have a negligible relation if any. Therefore there are no correlations among three modalities in terms of basic mechanisms. But their clinical relations are yet to be scrutinized. Biophoton and GDV need more rigorous clinical tests before they can be used as diagnostic tools.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.311-318
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• 2002

In this paper, we propose an efficient method for recognizing pupils and lip in a human face. Pupils are detected by a cost function, which uses features based on the eye's shape and a relation between pupil and eyebrow. The inner boundary of lip is detected by weighted vectors based on lip's shape and on the difference of gray level between lip and face skin. These vectors extract four feature points of lip : the top of the upper lip, the bottom of the lower lip, and the two corners. The experiments have been performed for many images and show very encouraging result.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-53
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• 2024

Ceramide is a lipid in which sphingoid bases and fatty acids are linked by amide bonds. As a marker of skin disease in the human stratum corneum, its disease-causing and therapeutic effects have been partially confirmed, and it is therefore an important element in commercially available cosmetic formulations. However, structural diversity caused by differences in the chain length, number, and location of hydroxyl groups makes quality control difficult. In this study, a method was established to separate different ceramide species using reversed-phase LC-MS/MS and thus enable qualitative evaluation. Separation of four standards was achieved within a short retention time, and the accuracy and sensitivity of the method were demonstrated by the low limit of detection (LOD) calculated based on the calibration curve showing linearity, with R² > 0.994. After verification of reproducibility and reliability through intra- and inter-day analyses, the efficiency of the method was confirmed through analysis of commercial cosmetic raw materials.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.43-48
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• 2018

Purpose: Human adenovirus infection mimics Kawasaki disease (KD) but can be detected in KD patients. The aim of this study was to determine the clinical differences between KD with adenovirus infection and only adenoviral infection and to identify biomarkers for prediction of adenovirus-positive KD from isolated adenoviral infection. Methods: A total of 147 patients with isolated adenovirus were identified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In addition, 11 patients having KD with adenovirus, who were treated with intravenous immunoglobulin therapy during the acute phase of KD were also evaluated. Results: Compared with the adenoviral infection group, the KD with adenovirus group was significantly associated with frequent lip and tongue changes, skin rash and changes in the extremities. In the laboratory parameters, higher C-reactive protein (CRP) level and presence of hypoalbuminemia and sterile pyuria were significantly associated with the KD group. In the multivariate analysis, lip and tongue changes (odds ratio [OR], 1.416; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.151-1.741; P=0.001), high CRP level (OR, 1.039; 95% CI 1.743-1.454; P= 0.021) and sterile pyuria (OR 1.052; 95% CI 0.861-1.286; P=0.041) were the significant predictive factors of KD. In addition, the cutoff CRP level related to KD with adenoviral detection was 56 mg/L, with a sensitivity of 81.8% and a specificity of 75.9%. Conclusion: Lip and tongue changes, higher serum CRP level and sterile pyuria were significantly correlated with adenovirus-positive KD.

• Journal of Advanced Information Technology and Convergence
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.71-83
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• 2020

In this paper, we propose a system that can detect the shape of a hand at high speed using an FPGA. The hand-shape detection system is designed using Verilog HDL, a hardware language that can process in parallel instead of sequentially running C++ because real-time processing is important. There are several methods for hand gesture recognition, but the image processing method is used. Since the human eye is sensitive to brightness, the YCbCr color model was selected among various color expression methods to obtain a result that is less affected by lighting. For the CbCr elements, only the components corresponding to the skin color are filtered out from the input image by utilizing the restriction conditions. In order to increase the speed of object recognition, a median filter that removes noise present in the input image is used, and this filter is designed to allow comparison of values and extraction of intermediate values at the same time to reduce the amount of computation. For parallel processing, it is designed to locate the centerline of the hand during scanning and sorting the stored data. The line with the highest count is selected as the center line of the hand, and the size of the hand is determined based on the count, and the hand and arm parts are separated. The designed hardware circuit satisfied the target operating frequency and the number of gates.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.434-451
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• 2017

For this study, groundwater samples for 3 years from 2011 through 2013 were collected at 106 groundwater monitoring site in Korea. These groundwater samples were analyzed for 13 pesticides such as cabofuran, pentachlorobenzene, hexachlorobenzene, simazine, atrazine, lindane (gamma-HCH), alachlor, heptachlor, chlordane (total), endosulfan (1, 2), dieldrin, endrin, 4,4-DDT. The objectives of this study were to determine the detection frequency and their concentrations of 13 pesticides and evaluate the health risk level considering ingestion, inhalation, and skin contact using concentrations of 13 pesticides in groundwater samples. An analysis was used for the simultaneous determination for 13 pesticides using GC-MS. GC-MS was performed on HP-5ms, using helium ($1ml\;min^{-1}$) as carrier gas. The average recoveries of the pesticides were from 92.8% to 120.8%. The limits of detection (LODs) were between $0.004{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ and $0.118{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ and the limits of quantification (LOQs) were between $0.012{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ and $0.354{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$. 106 groundwater wells were selected. 54 wells were from well to monitor background groundwater quality and 52 wells were from well to monitor groundwater quality in industrial or contamination source area. Eight pesticides including pentachlorobenzene, lindane (Gamma-HCH), heptachlor, chlordane (total), Endosulfan (1, 2), dieldrin, endrin, and 4,4-DDT were not detected in groundwater samples. The detection frequency for hexachlorobenzene, alachlor, carbofuran and simazine was 23.4%, 11.4%, 7.3%, and 1.0%, respectively. Atrazine was detected once in 2011. The average concentrations were $0.00423{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ for carbofuran, $0.000243{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ for alachlor, $0.00015{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ for simazine, and $0.00001{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ for hexachlorobenzene. The detection frequency of hexachlorobenzene was high, but the average concentration was low. In the contaminated groundwater, the detection frequency for hexachlorobenzene, alachlor, carbofuran, simazine and atrazine was 26.1%, 21.3%, 7.1%, 1.9% and 0.3%, respectively. In the uncontaminated groundwater, detection frequency for hexachlorobenzene, carbofuran and alachlor were 20.2%, 7.5%, and 1.9% respectively. Simazine and atrazine were not detected at uncontaminated groundwater wells. According to the purpose of groundwater use, atrazine was detected for agricultural groundwater use. Hexachlorobenzene showed high detection frequency at agricultural groundwater use area where the animal feeding area and golf course area were located. Alachlor showed more than 50% detection frequency at cropping area, pollution concern river area, and golf course area. Atrazine was detected in agricultural water use area. By land use, the maximum detection frequency of alachlor was found near an orchard. For human risk assessment, the cancer risk for the 5 pesticides was between $10^{-7}$ and $10^{-10}$, while the non-cancer risk (HQ value) was between $10^{-4}$ and $10^{-6}$. For conclusion, these monitoring study needs to continue because of the possibility of groundwater contamination based on various purpose of groundwater use.