• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.486-492
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• 2015

Drug metabolism mostly occurs in the liver. Cytochrome P450 (CYP) is a drug-metabolizing enzyme that is responsible for many important drug metabolism reactions. Recently, the US FDA and EU EMA have suggested that CYP enzyme induction can be measured by both enzymatic activity and mRNA expression. However, these experiments are time-consuming and their interassay variability can lead to misinterpretations of the results. To resolve these problems and establish a more powerful method to measure CYP induction, we determined CYP induction by using luminescent assay. Luminescent CYP assays link CYP enzyme activity to firefly luciferase luminescence technology. In this study, we measured the induction of CYP isozymes (1A2, 2B6, 2C9, and 3A4) in cryopreserved human hepatocytes (HMC424, 478, and 493) using a luminometer. We then examined the potential induction abilities (unknown so far) of mesalazine, a drug for colitis, and mosapride citrate, which is used as an antispasmodic drug. The results showed that mesalazine promotes CYP2B6 and 3A4 activities, while mosapride citrate promotes CYP1A2, 2B6, and 3A4 activities. Luminescent CYP assays offer rapid and safe advantages over LC-MS/MS and qRT-PCR methods. Furthermore, luminescent CYP assays decrease the interference between the optical properties of the test compound and the CYP substrates. Therefore, luminescent CYP assays are less labor intensive, rapid, and can be used as robust tools for high-throughput CYP screening during early drug discovery.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.43 no.11
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• pp.995-1009
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• 2010

Accelerated soil erosion due to extreme climate change, such as increased rainfall intensity, and human-induced environmental changes, is a widely recognized problem. Existing soil erosion models are generally based on the gross erosion concept to compute annual upland soil loss in tons per acre per year. However, such models are not suitable for event-based simulations of erosion and deposition in time and space. Recent advances in computer geographic information system (GIS) technologies have allowed hydrologists to develop physically based models, and the trend in erosion prediction is towards process-based models, instead of conceptually lumped models. This study aims to propose an effective and robust distributed rainfall-sediment yield-runoff model consisting of basic element modules: a rainfall-runoff module based on the kinematic wave method for subsurface and surface flow, and a runoff-sediment yield-runoff model based on the unit stream power method. The model was tested on the Cheoncheon catchment, upstream of the Yongdam dam using hydrological data for three extreme flood events due to typhoons. The model provided acceptable simulation results with respect to both discharge and sediment discharge even though the simulated sedigraphs were underestimated, compared to observations. The spatial distribution of erosion and deposition demonstrated that eroded sediment loads were deposited in the cells along the channel network, which have a short overland flow length and a gentle local slope while the erosion rate increased as rainfall became larger. Additionally, spatially heterogeneous rainfall intensity, dependant on Thiessen polygons, led to spatially-distinct erosion and deposition patterns.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.83-96
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• 2017

This study presented a surface water quality modeling framework considering the spatial resolution of pollutant load estimation to better represent stream water quality characteristics in the Saemangeum watershed which has been focused on keeping its water resources sustainable after the Saemangeum embankment construction. The watershed delineated into 804 sub-watersheds in total based on the administrative districts, which were units for pollutant load estimation and counted as 739 in the watershed, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and agricultural structures such as drainage canal. The established model consists of 7 Mangyung (MG) sub-models, 7 Dongjin (DJ) sub-models, and 3 Reclaimed sub-models, and the sub-models were simulated in a sequence of upstream to downstream based on its connectivity. The hydrologic calibration and validation of the model were conducted from 14 flow stations for the period of 2009 and 2013 using an automatic calibration scheme. The model performance to the hydrologic stations for calibration and validation showed that the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE) ranged from 0.66 to 0.97, PBIAS were -31.0~16.5 %, and $R^2$ were from 0.75 to 0.98, respectively in a monthly time step and therefore, the model showed its hydrological applicability to the watershed. The water quality calibration and validation were conducted based on the 29 stations with the water quality constituents of DO, BOD, TN, and TP during the same period with the flow. The water quality model were manually calibrated, and generally showed an applicability by resulting reasonable variability and seasonality, although some exceptional simulation results were identified in some upstream stations under low-flow conditions. The spatial subdivision in the model framework were compared with previous studies to assess the consideration of administrative boundaries for watershed delineation, and this study outperformed in flow, but showed a similar level of model performance in water quality. The framework presented here can be applicable in a regional scale watershed as well as in a need of fine-resolution simulation.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.15 no.3 s.70
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• pp.468-473
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• 2005

The coastal regions of Yeosu, the South Sea of Korea, has occurred annually the red tide which is caused by potentially ichthyotoxic dinoflagellate C. polykrikoides, with a wide avenue for exchange with oceanic waters and freshwater runoff from Sumjin river. We attempted to examine the variability in response to vertical migration and concentration of extracted DNA/RNA of C. polykrikoides exposed to salinity-stratified waters. The experimental aquarium of the 60 liter was employed to culture C. polykrikoides. One aquarium was supplied with only sea water, the other was consisted of sea water and freshwater. Experiment was conducted for 5 days. In experimental column (mixture of freshwater and sea water), salinity was maintained to 20 at upper and approximately 30 at bottom during the period of this study. The fluctuation with related to dissolved oxygen and pH was similar pattern to both columns. Chlorophyll a was significantly higher value at upper than bottom. During 24h, chlorphyll a on experimental column was extremely high on the top as soon as lighting, compared with control. With elapsed time, the gap between experimental and control columns was a little. In darkness, chlorophyll a was not significantly different between upper and bottom, most cells appeared to randomly distribute on column regardless of water layer. Fluctuation with related to concentration of extracted DNA and RNA based on ratio of absorbance of 260 and 280 nm in experimental column was higher at final day or diel migration than control. These results implied that a large volume of freshwater could be associated with influence of concentration of DNA and RNA, in particular, rapid upward movement caused massive fish kills as soon as sunset.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.242-254
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• 2010

Streams changed by artificial factor those support positive functions but also negative function to humanbeing. Time and pathway exceed the lost of structure and negative function appearing as disturbance. Therefore, it is desirable to prepare right situation to break of a vicious circle. Stream ecology was evaluated with using ichthyofauna during three years at the three disturbed sites and reference sites in Nakdong River. Forty-one species belonging three orders and ten families were identified in six surveying sites of Nakdong River during 2007~2009. Korean endemic species (14 species, 34.1%) and alien (3 species, 7.3%) were identified in Nakdong River ichthyofauna. Species number, species diversity, ecosystem structure and habitat variability of ecosystem were applied to evaluate stream ecosystem. In view of three year comprehended data at six sites; numeric instability appeared Andong Dam and Naeseongcheon sites worse than Gamcheon and reference site, otherwise more numeric diversity appeared Gamcheon and reference site than Andong Dam and Naeseongcheon. As a result of integration, sand stream including downstream of Andong dam, Naeseongcheon and Gamcheon has been having more diversified biodiversity and habitat diversity than those in the pebble stream.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.47-51
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• 2011

Background and Objectives: Vocal polyps arc one of the most frequent benign laryngeal diseases. They arc usually found at the midpoint of the vocal fold. They are mainly caused by vocal overuse. Vocal polyps arc usually removed surgically. Generally, age-related changes to speech are attributed to change in anatomy and physiology of the speech mechanism. These changes result in increased variability in the acoustic properties of speech with age. Still, not 'all studies of age-related changes in speech have taken differences between the young group and adult group after laryngeal microsurgery into account. The aim of this investigation was to compare improvement of acoustic analysis in young patients and elderly patients with vocal polyps, before and after the laryngeal microsurgery. Materials and Method: One hundred and twenty-eight patients who underwent laryngeal microsurgery for vocal polyps from 2008 through 2011 were reviewed retrospectively. 105 of the 128 patients under age 60 were classified as adult group (AG), and remaining 23 patients as elderly group (EG). The speech of AG and EG were evaluated before and after surgery for identification of differences for age group across measures of fundamental frequency (F0), Jitter, Shimmer and Maximum phonation time (MPT). Results: There were not significant differences between two groups for improvement of F0, Jitter, Shimmer, NHR, and MPT before and after surgery. The findings suggest that elderly group compares quite well with adult group in effectiveness of surgery. However, comparison between elderly group and young group (Age under 40) there was significant difference of improvement in Jitter and Shimmer. Conclusion: In general, the results of the present research showed significant improvement in vocal quality after phonosurgery of vocal polyp in both elderly and adult group. However, comparison of improvement between elderly group and young group, there were significant differences of improvement in jitter and shimmer. Therefore, in treatment planning of elderly group, we should consider age related changes of vocal cord.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.399-409
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• 2012

As a part of the short-period variability survey (SPVS) at Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory, we obtained time-series BV CCD images in the region of Cyg OB3 association centered on the open cluster NGC 6871. The observations were performed for 18 nights from September 5, 2008 to September 1, 2009. We found 15 short-period variable stars in the region. They are ${\delta}$ Scuti type stars belonging to the local spiral arm, Orion spur. Among them, only two stars were previously known, and the rest are newly discovered ones. In this paper, we have performed a multiple-frequency analysis to determine frequencies of the 15 ${\delta}$ Scuti type stars, using the discrete Fourier transform and linear least-square fitting methods. One of the newly discovered variable stars is a double-mode ${\delta}$ Scuti type star with the fundamental and the first overtone modes, and two are high amplitude ${\delta}$ Scuti stars.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 1974

Data from this study support the View that the following factors are not sufficiently important in Korea to invalidate the relationships observed between age of marriage and fertility: (1) Premarital pregnancy and common law marriage, (2) shortening of birth intervals in late marriages, (3) adverse effects of very eary marriage in reproductive capacity, and (4) postponement of first pregnancy among early marriages. Thirteen variables which were considered to be potential predictors of fertility were studied to determine their influence on three indices of fertility. Age of marriage and family planning praetice are the strongest predictors and account for about 10% and 7% of the total variance, respectively. Seven other factors each account for an intermediate amount of variability; these are ideal number of children, rural versus urban study area, education, aspiration for daughter, index of exposure to mass media, economic index of respondent's home at survey, and residence before marriage. The remaining variables have no consistently significant relationship to fertility. Most of the relationships appear to be stable and consistent over time; others appear to be changing. The latter group include those variables which are associated with modernization indices of family planning practice, mass media exposure. and aspiration for daughters. Thus, the index of family planning practice is of limited significance for the $40{\sim}49$ age group but is the most important variable for the $20{\sim}29$ year women. The relationship is a direct one for the two age groups between 30 and 49 years which suggests that these groups already had high fertility when family planning services became available and that this high fertility then became an inducement to acccept contraception. The pattern of relationship is not yet clear for the $20{\sim}29$ year group. Similar interactions are observed for the other indices of modernity and are discussed. The thirteen variables together can account for a maximum of about 40% of the variance in the number of live births in the age group $30{\sim}39$, and for lesser amounts of variance in other age and fertility groupings.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.50 no.12
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• pp.837-847
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• 2017

Land Surface Model (LSM) was developed for the Soyang river basin located in Korean Peninsula to clarify the spatio-temporal variability of hydrological weather parameters. Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model was used as a LSM. The spatial resolution of the model was 10 km and the time resolution was 1 day. Based on the daily flow data from 2007 to 2010, the 7 parameters of the model were calibrated using the Isolated Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and the model was verified using the daily flow data from 2011 to 2014. The model showed a Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient of 0.90 and a correlation coefficient of 0.95 for both calibration and validation periods. The hydrometeorological variables estimated for the Soyang river basin reflected well the seasonal characteristics of summer rainfall concentration, the change of short and shortwave radiation due to temperature change, the change of surface temperature, the evaporation and vegetation increase in the cover layer, and the corresponding change in total evapotranspiration. The model soil moisture data was compared with in-situ soil moisture data. The slope of the trend line relating the two data was 1.087 and correlation coefficient was 0.723 for the Spring, Summer and Fall season. The result of this study suggests that the LSM can be used as a powerful tool in developing precise and efficient water resources plans by providing accurate understanding on the spatio-temporal variation of hydrometeorological variables.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.11
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• pp.206-216
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• 2013

The emotion plays a critical role in human's daily life including learning, action, decision and communication. In this paper, emotion discrimination classifier is designed to reduce system complexity through reduced selection of dominant features from biosignals. The photoplethysmography(PPG), skin temperature, skin conductance, fontal and parietal electroencephalography(EEG) signals were measured during 4 types of movie watching associated with the induction of neutral, sad, fear joy emotions. The genetic algorithm with support vector machine(SVM) based fitness function was designed to determine dominant features among 24 parameters extracted from measured biosignals. It shows maximum classification accuracy of 96.4%, which is 17% higher than that of SVM alone. The minimum error features selected are the mean and NN50 of heart rate variability from PPG signal, the mean of PPG induced pulse transit time, the mean of skin resistance, and ${\delta}$ and ${\beta}$ frequency band powers of parietal EEG. The combination of parietal EEG, PPG, and skin resistance is recommendable in high accuracy instrumentation, while the combinational use of PPG and skin conductance(79% accuracy) is affordable in simplified instrumentation.