• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.122-132
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• 2021

Objectives : This systematic review aims to assess the effectiveness of thread embedding therapy on animal model for rheumatoid arthritis. Methods : Search was conducted in the Cochrane library, MEDLINE (PubMed), EMBASE, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wan-Fang Database, Technology Journal Database, the Korean Studies Information Service System, the Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System, the Research Information Sharing Service, the National Digital Science Library, the Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal and the Korea Citation Index. Data were extracted concerning animal model, intervention and rheumatoid arthritis indicator by two independent reviewers. Reporting quality was also evaluated by the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) guidelines 2.0. Results : One thousand thirty six studies were primarily selected. After screening, 10 studies met the inclusion criteria. 1 study was published 2005, 1 study was published 2010, 1 study was published 2012, 1 study was published 2015, 2 studies were published 2016, 3 studies were published 2017, 1 study was published 2018. The most frequently used acupoints were ST36 and BL23, and were used with an average frequency of 11.8 days. All of these thread embedding therapy studies were effective on behavioral, morphological, immunohistological and hematological indicators to treat of rheumatoid arthritis model. Conclusions : These results demonstrated the effectiveness of thread embedding therapy and suggested the putative mechanism. However, considering the small number of included studies, low reporting quality and differences in study design, further studies with rigorous designs and high reporting quality need to be conducted.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.1011-1021
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• 2021

The root bark of Ulmus davidiana var. japonica (Japanese elm) is used in Korea and other East Asian countries as a traditional herbal remedy to treat a variety of inflammatory diseases and ailments such as edema, gastric cancer and mastitis. For this study, we investigated the lipid metabolism and anti-obesity efficacy of ethyl alcohol extract of Ulmus davidiana var. japonica root bark (UDE). First, HPLC was performed to quantify the level of (+)-catechin, the active ingredient of UDE. In the following experiments, cultured 3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes and high-fat diet (HFD)-fed murine model were studied for anti-obesity efficacy by testing the lipid metabolism effects of UDE and (+)-catechin. In the test using 3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes, treatment with UDE inhibited adipocyte differentiation and significantly reduced the production of adipogenic genes and transcription factors PPARγ, C/EBPα and SREBP-1c. HFD-fed, obese mice were administered with UDE (200 mg/kg per day) and (+)-catechin (30 mg/kg per day) by oral gavage for 4 weeks. Weight gain, epididymal and abdominal adipose tissue mass were significantly reduced, and a change in adipocyte size was observed in the UDE and (+)-catechin treatment groups compared to the untreated control group (^***p < 0.001). Significantly lower total cholesterol and triglyceride levels were detected in UDE-treated HFD mice compared to the control, revealing the efficacy of UDE. In addition, it was found that lipid accumulation in hepatocytes was also significantly reduced after administration of UDE. These results suggest that UDE has significant anti-obesity and lipid metabolism effects through inhibition of adipocyte differentiation and adipogenesis.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.47-53
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• 2021

Sparse ratings data hinder reliable similarity computation between users, which degrades the performance of memory-based collaborative filtering techniques for recommender systems. Many works in the literature have been developed for solving this data sparsity problem, where the most simple and representative ones are the methods of utilizing Jaccard index. This index reflects the number of commonly rated items between two users and is mostly integrated into traditional similarity measures to compute similarity more accurately between the users. However, such integration is very straightforward with no consideration of the degree of data sparsity. This study suggests a novel idea of applying different similarity measures depending on the numeric value of Jaccard index between two users. Performance experiments are conducted to obtain optimal values of the parameters used by the proposed method and evaluate it in comparison with other relevant methods. As a result, the proposed demonstrates the best and comparable performance in prediction and recommendation accuracies.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.539-549
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• 2019

Background: 20(S)-Protopanaxadiol (PPD), the aglycone part of 20(S)-protopanaxadiol ginsenosides, possesses antidepressant activity among many other pharmacological activities. It is currently undergoing clinical trial in China as an antidepressant. Methods: In this study, an ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole time-of-flight mass tandem mass spectrometry method was established to identify the metabolites of PPD in human plasma and urine following oral administration in phase IIa clinical trial. Results: A total of 40 metabolites in human plasma and urine were identified using this method. Four metabolites identified were isolated from rat feces, and two of them were analyzed by NMR to elucidate the exact structures. The structures of isolated compounds were confirmed as (20S,24S)-epoxydammarane-12,23,25-triol-3-one and (20S,24S)-epoxydammarane-3,12,23,25-tetrol. Both compounds were found as metabolites in human for the first time. Upon comparing our findings with the findings of the in vitro study of PPD metabolism in human liver microsomes and human hepatocytes, metabolites with m/z 475.3783 and phase II metabolites were not found in our study whereas metabolites with m/z 505.3530, 523.3641, and 525.3788 were exclusively detected in our experiments. Conclusion: The metabolites identified using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry in our study were mostly hydroxylated metabolites. This indicated that PPD was metabolized in human body mainly through phase I hepatic metabolism. The main metabolites are in 20,24-oxide form with multiple hydroxylation sites. Finally, the metabolic pathways of PPD in vivo (human) were proposed based on structural analysis.

• Proceedings of the Plant Resources Society of Korea Conference
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• 2019.10a
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• pp.86-86
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• 2019

Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (SB) has been widely studied to treat inflammatory diseases in east Asia. In the recent years, many studies have focused on modifying herbs to increase the pharmacological effects. Roasting alcohol absorbed SB is one of the traditional methods to increase the therapeutic effects. Currently there are no reports on the pharmacological effects of roasted SB. This study investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of roasted 30% ethyl alcohol absorbed SB extract (SR) on mice ear edema. After intra-gastric injection of dexamethasone (for positive control, 2 mg/kg) and SR (50, 100, 400 mg/kg), ear edema was provoked by croton oil (5% v/v in acetone, 10 ul/ear). Ear thickness was measured with a digital caliper to quantify the change in swelling. For histological study, we made paraffin sections and performed Phloxine-Tartrazine staining and Masson's trichrome staining to observe epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous region and collagen fiber of mice ear tissues. Ear thickness decreased dose-dependent manner in SR treated groups. Histological analysis compared with dexamethasone treated group, SR treated groups demonstrated a similar reduction in hypoplasia of epidermis and influx of inflammatory cells. Increase of subcutaneous layer and decrease of collagen fibers were significantly recovered in SR treated group (400 mg/kg) and dexamethasone treated group. In conclusion, treatment with SR ameliorates auricular inflammation induced with croton oil in mice. Experiments are now underway to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying anti-inflammatory activities of SR.

• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.471-480
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• 2020

Background: The roots of Cirsium japonicum var. ussuriense (RCJ) have been used as traditional medicine in Korea for hematuria and hematemesis. These extracts exert anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory effects by scavenging for free radical and regulating the inflammatory response. However, the effect of RCJ on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has not been elucidated. Thus, we evaluated the water extract of RCJ (WRCJ) using type II collagen-induced RA models. Methods and Results: RA was induced by immunization with type II collagen. All experimental materials were orally administered daily for three weeks. The positive control group was administered with 0.2 mg/kg methotrexate (n = 7), while the experimental group was administered with WRCJ (100 or 500 mg/kg, n = 7). Serum levels of TNF-alpha, Interleukin 6 (IL-6), and type II collagen IgG (CII) were measured using ELISA. Administration of 500 mg/kg WRCJ decreased the levels of TNF-alpha, IL-6, and CII. Moreover, WRCJ treatment diminished swelling of hind legs and infiltration of inflammatory cells in RA models' synovial membrane. Conclusions: These results indicate that WRCJ could improve RA, reduce inflammatory indicators and synovial inflammation. However, further experiments are required to determine how WRCJ can influence the signal transduction pathway in RA.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2021

Pseudo relevance feedback (PRF) is a powerful query expansion (QE) technique that prepares queries using the top k pseudorelevant documents and choosing expansion elements. Traditional PRF frameworks have robustly handled vocabulary mismatch corresponding to user queries and pertinent documents; nevertheless, expansion elements are chosen, disregarding similarity to the original query's elements. Word embedding (WE) schemes comprise techniques of significant interest concerning QE, that falls within the information retrieval domain. Deep averaging networks (DANs) defines a framework relying on average word presence passed through multiple linear layers. The complete query is understandably represented using the average vector comprising the query terms. The vector may be employed for determining expansion elements pertinent to the entire query. In this study, we suggest a DANs-based technique that augments PRF frameworks by integrating WE similarities to facilitate Arabic information retrieval. The technique is based on the fundamental that the top pseudo-relevant document set is assessed to determine candidate element distribution and select expansion terms appropriately, considering their similarity to the average vector representing the initial query elements. The Word2Vec model is selected for executing the experiments on a standard Arabic TREC 2001/2002 set. The majority of the evaluations indicate that the PRF implementation in the present study offers a significant performance improvement compared to that of the baseline PRF frameworks.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.21-28
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• 2019

Handmade hydrated lime has been used for preservation and repair of architectural heritage in Korea. However, the effect of the amount of water used for slaking quicklime on the physical and chemical properties of the hydrated lime, which is the result of the slaking process, has not been clearly understood. In this study, particle size distribution, chemical composition and crystalline phases of the hydrated lime are investigated by varying the amount of water used for the slaking. In addition, temperature history during the slaking process is examined. For this, various experiments, such as laser diffraction analysis, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and temperature recording using a thermocouple, were performed. When the quicklime came into contact with water, its temperature reached $100^{\circ}C$ within 10 min due to sudden exothermic reaction of calcium oxide, and this temperature was maintained for about 30 min. The water to lime ratio influenced the cooling rate during the slaking process; that is, the more water was used, the longer it took to reach an ambient temperature. The amount of water for the slaking did not have a noticeable effect on the contents of major components of the hydrated lime such as calcium hydroxide and calcium carbonate, but when slaked with more amount of water, average particle size of the lime tended to decrease. The experimental results in this study can be used as references for developing guidelines on the safety or appropriate amount of water in the lime slaking process.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.203-210
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• 2020

Memory-based collaborative filtering is one of the representative types of the recommender system, but it suffers from the inherent problem of data sparsity. Although many works have been devoted to solving this problem, there is still a request for more systematic approaches to the problem. This study exploits distribution of user ratings given to items for computing similarity. All user ratings are utilized in the proposed method, compared to previous ones which use ratings for only common items between users. Moreover, for similarity computation, it takes a global view of ratings for items by reflecting other users' ratings for that item. Performance is evaluated through experiments and compared to that of other relevant methods. The results reveal that the proposed demonstrates superior performance in prediction and rank accuracies. This improvement in prediction accuracy is as high as 2.6 times more than that achieved by the state-of-the-art method over the traditional similarity measures.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1574-1580
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• 2020

Traditional pose estimation methods include using special devices or images through image processing. The disadvantage of using a device is that the environment in which the device can be used is limited and costly. The use of cameras and image processing has the advantage of reducing environmental constraints and costs, but the performance is lower. CNN(Convolutional Neural Networks) were studied for pose estimation just using only camera without these disadvantage. Various techniques were proposed to increase cognitive performance. In this paper, the effect of the skip connection on the network was experimented by using various skip connections on the joint recognition of the hand. Experiments have confirmed that the presence of additional skip connections other than the basic skip connections has a better effect on performance, but the network with downward skip connections is the best performance.