• Journal of Life Science
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.662-670
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• 2021

Interstitial cells of Cajal (ICCs) are the pacemaking cells in the gastrointestinal (GI) muscles that generate the rhythmic oscillation in membrane potentials known as slow waves. In the present study, we investigated the effects of mirtazapine, a noradrenergic and serotonergic antidepressant, on pacemaking potential in cultured ICCs from the murine small intestine. The whole-cell patch-clamp configuration was used to record pacemaker potential in cultured ICCs. Mirtazapine induced pacemaker potential depolarizations in a concentration-dependent manner in the current clamp mode. Y25130 (a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist), RS39604 (a 5-HT4 receptor antagonist), and SB269970 (a 5-HT7 receptor antagonist) had no effects on mirtazapine-induced pacemaker potential depolarizations. Also, methoctramine, a muscarinic M₂ receptor antagonist, had no effect on mirtazapine-induced pacemaker potential depolarizations, whereas 4-diphenylacetoxy-N-methyl-piperidine methiodide (4-DAMP), a muscarinic M₃ receptor antagonist, inhibited the depolarizations. When guanosine 5'-[β-thio] diphosphate (GDP-β-S; 1 mM) was in the pipette solution, mirtazapine-induced pacemaker potential depolarization was blocked. When an external Ca²⁺ free solution or thapsigargin, a Ca²⁺-ATPase inhibitor of the endoplasmic reticulum, was applied, the generation of pacemaker potentials disappeared, and under these conditions, mirtazapine induced pacemaker potential depolarizations. In addition, protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor, calphostin C, and chelerythrine inhibited mirtazapine-induced pacemaker potential depolarizations. These results suggest that mirtazapine regulates pacemaker potentials through muscarinic M₃ receptor activation via a G protein-dependent and an external or internal Ca²⁺-independent PKC pathway in the ICCs. Therefore, mirtazapine can control GI motility through ICCs.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.391-398
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• 2018

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are an attractive resource for refractory patients because of their anti-inflammatory/immunomodulatory capability and multi-lineage differentiation potential. The transplantation of MSCs has led to positive results in preclinical and clinical application to various diseases, including autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, liver cirrhosis, and ischemic stroke. On the other hand, studies have shown that paracrine factors, not direct cell replacement for damaged cells or tissue, are the main contributors in MSC-based therapy. More recently, evidence has indicated that MSC-derived exosomes play crucial roles in regulating the paracrine factors that can mediate tissue regeneration via transferring nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids to the local microenvironment and cell-to-cell communication. The use of these exosomes is likely to be beneficial for the therapeutic application of MSCs because their use can avoid harmful effects, such as tumor formation involved in cell transplantation. Therefore, therapeutic applications using MSC-derived exosomes might be safe and efficient strategies for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. This review summarizes the recent advances and provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of MSC-derived exosomes as a therapeutic agent.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.301-308
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• 2021

It is important to develop a digital SOC (Social Overhead Capital) maintenance system for preemptive maintenance in response to the rapid aging of social infrastructures. Abnormal signals induced from structures can be detected quickly and optimal decisions can be made promptly using IoT sensors deployed on the structures. In this study, a digital SOC monitoring system incorporating a multimetric IoT sensor was developed for long-term monitoring, for use in cloud-computing server for automated and powerful data analysis, and for establishing databases to perform : (1) multimetric sensing, (2) long-term operation, and (3) LTE-based direct communication. The developed sensor had three axes of acceleration, and five axes of strain sensing channels for multimetric sensing, and had an event-driven power management system that activated the sensors only when vibration exceeded a predetermined limit, or the timer was triggered. The power management system could reduce power consumption, and an additional solar panel charging could enable long-term operation. Data from the sensors were transmitted to the server in real-time via low-power LTE-CAT M1 communication, which does not require an additional gateway device. Furthermore, the cloud server was developed to receive multi-variable data from the sensor, and perform a displacement fusion algorithm to obtain reference-free structural displacement for ambient structural assessment. The proposed digital SOC system was experimentally validated on a steel railroad and concrete girder bridge.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.304-312
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• 2021

The present study aimed to develop new physiologically active ingredients from Angelica gigas. The polysaccharides purified from A. gigas, AGE-2c-I, showed potent anti-complementary activity in a dose-dependent manner. C₃ activation products were identified through crossed immuno-electrophoresis using anti-human C₃ antibodies and the anti-complementary activity of AGE-2c-I under Ca⁺⁺-free conditions suggests that AGE-2c-I may induce complementary activation via both alternative and classical pathways. In addition, AGE-2c-I augmented the production of various cytokines, such as interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, IL-12, and tumor necrosis factor-α, by peritoneal macrophages. Furthermore, intravenous (i.v.) administration of AGE-2c-I dose-dependently enhanced natural killer cell cytotoxicity against YAC-1 lymphoma. In experimental lung metastasis, prophylactic i.v. administration of AGE-2c-I inhibited lung metastasis by 58% at 100 ㎍/mouse. From the above results, we suggest that AGE-2c-I purified from A. gigas has potent immune system-stimulating activities, and is a potentially promising food ingredient beneficial to human health.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.3-21
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• 2021

Klaus Schwab's discussion on the Fourth Industrial Revolution provides a framework for predicting the direction of legal technology development. Technological convergence, which has emerged as the core concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has a significant effect on legal technology. In particular, various new technologies, such as legal chatbots and platforms, are being introduced to enhance efficiency and accessibility in the legal field. However, legal technology is still in its early stage, with institutional improvement needed to vitalize the industry. In this paper, we first specify the concept and classification of legal technology in Chapter 2, followed by trends and limitations in Chapter 3 and ways of vitalizing legal technology in the future in Chapter 4. To invigorate legal technology development, it is necessary to put in place legal regulatory measures that stipulate the active disclosure of legal data, such as precedents, and make free use of such measures. In the law, many issues, such as the safety of artificial intelligence, personal information protection, and ethical standards, will be discussed in the future. Therefore, via this paper, we hope to promote the formation of social consensus and prepare countermeasures, such as legislative measures.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2022

In this paper, parameter characteristics such as pH effect, isotherm, kinetic and thermodynamic parameters and competitive adsorption of dyes including malachite green (MG), direct red 81 (DR 81) and thioflavin S (TS), which have different functional groups, being adsorbed onto activated carbon were investigated. Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models were employed to find the adsorption mechanism. Effectiveness of adsorption treatment of three dyes by activated carbon were confirmed by the Langmuir dimensionless separation factor. The mechanism was found to be a physical adsorption which can be verified through the adsorption heat calculated by Temkin equation. The adsorption kinetics followed the pseudo second order and the rate limiting step was intra-particle diffusion. The positive enthalpy and entropy changes showed an endothermic reaction and increased disorder via adsorption at the S-L interface, respectively. For each dye molecule, negative Gibbs free energy increased with the temperature, which means that the process is spontaneous. In the binary component system, it was found that the same functional groups of the dye could interfere with the mutual adsorption, and different functional groups did not significantly affect the adsorption. In the ternary component system, the adsorption for MG lowered a bit, likely to be disturbed by the other dyes meanwhile DR 81 and TS were to be positively affected by the presence of MG, thus resulting in much higher adsorption.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.402-411
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• 2021

Purpose: This study explored nursing students' experiences of attending clinical practicum courses in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic era, focusing on their confidence in clinical competency and job readiness. Methods: The data for this study were collected using online questionnaires that were uploaded to a free online survey website and distributed via a link to the survey to 334 nursing students attending four-year nursing colleges at four national universities. Data analysis was done with descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, and ANOVA. Results: The participants were mostly female (83.2%) college seniors (78.1%). About 60% of the participants practiced between 40% to 100% of their clinical practicum hours in alternative ways. Almost a third of the participants reported that they were not ready for a job (30.2%). However, participants' confidence in clinical competency and job readiness was not related to the rate of alternative practice, but rather to both achievement of educational outcomes and satisfaction in the nursing practicum. Conclusion: Due to COVID-19, it is evident that effective and efficient materials and ways of delivering clinical courses are constantly to be sought and developed. In particular, recently graduated nurses who experienced abrupt and considerable alterations in their clinical practicum courses due to COVID-19 are in need of attention while they strive to make clinical adaptations.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.300-307
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• 2022

Time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography (TR-SFX) is a powerful technique for determining temporal variations in the structural properties of biomacromolecules on ultra-short time scales without causing structure damage by employing femtosecond X-ray laser pulses generated by an X-ray free electron laser (XFEL). The mixing rate of reactants and biomolecule samples, as well as the hit rate between crystal samples and x-ray pulses, are critical factors determining TR-SFX performance, such as accurate image acquisition and efficient sample consumption. We here develop two distinct sample delivery systems that enable ultra-fast mixing and on-demand droplet injecting via pneumatic application with a square pulse signal. The first strategy relies on inertial mixing, which is caused by the high-speed collision and subsequent coalescence of droplets ejected through a double nozzle, while the second relies on on-demand pneumatic jetting embedded with a 3D-printed micromixer. First, the colliding behaviors of the droplets ejected through the double nozzle, as well as the inertial mixing within the coalesced droplets, are investigated experimentally and numerically. The mixing performance of the pneumatic jetting system with an integrated micromixer is then evaluated by using similar approaches. The sample delivery system devised in this work is very valuable for three-dimensional biomolecular structure analysis, which is critical for elucidating the mechanisms by which certain proteins cause disease, as well as searching for antibody drugs and new drug candidates.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.179-186
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• 2021

Manipulation of complex objects with an anthropomorphic robot hand like a human hand is a challenge in the human-centric environment. In order to train the anthropomorphic robot hand which has a high degree of freedom (DoF), human demonstration augmented deep reinforcement learning policy optimization methods have been proposed. In this work, we first demonstrate augmentation of human demonstration in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is effective for object manipulation by comparing the performance of the augmentation-free Natural Policy Gradient (NPG) and Demonstration Augmented NPG (DA-NPG). Then three DRL policy optimization methods, namely NPG, Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), have been evaluated with DA (i.e., DA-NPG, DA-TRPO, and DA-PPO) and without DA by manipulating six objects such as apple, banana, bottle, light bulb, camera, and hammer. The results show that DA-NPG achieved the average success rate of 99.33% whereas NPG only achieved 60%. In addition, DA-NPG succeeded grasping all six objects while DA-TRPO and DA-PPO failed to grasp some objects and showed unstable performances.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.444-450
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• 2022

The effect of coated polyester (PET) textiles with metal oxide, chitosan, and copper ion on the antibacterial and antiviral activities was evaluated to investigate the applicability of multi-coated PET textiles as antiviral materials. Compared to coated PETs with a single agent, multi-coated PETs reduced the loading amount of coating materials as well as the contact time with bacteria for a bacterial cell number of < 10 CFU/mL, which was not detectable with the naked eyes. Metal oxides generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as free radicals by a catalytic reaction, and copper ions can promote contact killing by the generation of ROS. Chitosan not only enhanced antibacterial activities due to amine groups, but enabled it to be a template to load copper ions. We observed that multi-coated PET textiles have both antibacterial activities for E. coli and S. aureus and antiviral efficiency of more than 99.9% for influenza A (H1N1) and SARS-CoV-2. The multi-coated PET textiles could also be prepared via a roll-to-roll coating process, which showed high antiviral efficacy, demonstrating its potential use in air filtration and antiviral products such as masks and personal protective equipment.