• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.66-85
• /
• 2002

Traditional herbal medicine is used extensively among the Korean populations, and other Asian countries employ similar therapies as well In recent years, extensive focus was laid on adulteration of the herbal medicine with heavy metals. This may be mainly due to a soil contamination by an environmental pollution. The objective of this study is to identify the contents of various heavy metals in the blood from OhJeokSan-Decoction (OD) treated-rats. For this study, 13 kinds of metals including essential and heavy metals, i.e. Al, As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Se and Zn were analyzed by a slight modification of EPA methods and the following results are obtained. ; 1. There is no significant difference between the OD-treated groups and control group in liver, kidney, bone, brain, weight, food intake. 2. The amount of each metal analyzed in the liver are as follows; Al ; $0.235{\sim}4.215mg／kg$, As ; $0.103{\sim}0.461mg／kg$, Cd ; $0.005{\sim}0.010mg／kg$, Co ; $0.017{\sim}0.046mg／kg$, Cr ; $0.137{\sim}0.403mg／kg$, Cu ; $1.736{\sim}4.827mg／kg$, Fe ; $54.472{\sim}381.447mg／kg$, Hg ; not detected, Mn ; $1.159{\sim}2.803mg／kg$, Ni ; $0.007{\sim}0.095mg／kg$, Pb ; not detected, Se ; $0.682{\sim}1.887mg／kg$, Zn ; $10.213{\sim}26.119mg／kg$, by groups, respectively. In control and other experimental group, several metal (Co, Cu, Mn, Zn, As, Cr) has a significant difference, but in experimental I and other experimental II, III, IV, V groups, there are no significant difference. 3. The amount of each metal analyzed in the kidney are as follows; Al ; $1.712{\sim}31.230mg／kg$, As ; $0.062{\sim}0.439mg／kg$, Cd ; $0.010{\sim}0.062mg／kg$, Co ; $0.000{\sim}0.101mg／kg$, Cr ; $0.125{\sim}0.636mg／kg$, Cu ; $3.385{\sim}12.502mg／kg$, Fe ; $41.148{\sim}99.709mg／kg$, Hg ; $0.000{\sim}0.270mg／kg$, Mn ; $0.433{\sim}2.301mg／kg$, Ni ; $0.000{\sim}0.221mg／kg$, Pb ; $0.000{\sim}0.584mg／kg$, Se ; $0.540{\sim}1.600mg／kg$, Zn ; $8.775{\sim}17.060mg／kg$, by groups, respectively. The concentration of Cu, Se, Cr, and Hg are variated significantly in control and other experimental group, and Cu, Se, Cd, Cr are variated significantly in experimental I and other experimental II, III, IV, V groups. 4. The amount of each metal analyzed in the bone(tibia and fibula) are as follows; Al ; $9.557{\sim}119.464mg／kg$, As ; $0.139{\sim}12.250mg／kg$, Cd ; $0.000{\sim}0.295mg／kg$, Co ; $0.022{\sim}0.243mg／kg$, Cr ; $0.239{\sim}1.999mg／kg$, Cu ; $0.000{\sim}2.291mg／kg$, Fe ; $240.249{\sim}841.956mg／kg$, Hg ; $0.000{\sim}0.983mg／kg$, Mn ; $0.214{\sim}7.353mg／kg$, Ni ; $5.473{\sim}11.453mg／kg$, Pb ; $0.000{\sim}8.502mg／kg$, Se ; $0.000{\sim}3.005mg／kg$, Zn ; $61.158{\sim}195.038mg／kg$, by groups, respectively. The concentration of Se, Cd are variated significantly in control and other experimental groups, and Se is variated significantly in experimental I and other experimental II, III, IV, V groups. 5. Exceptionally several metal concentration is increased or decreased. but there is no significant harmful difference of metal concentration in the liver, kidney and bone, from the OD-treated-rats compared to those of the control group even if higher dosage($1{\sim}8$ times dosage of person) of OD was administered. Thus, it is expected that the herbal decoction in the traditional herbal medicine would not lay any burden on the body and the heavy metal toxins would not affect our physiological system. However, other kinds of herbal treatment, such as i.v. and i.p. should be considered in terms of metal toxicity in the body since the level of certain metal.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.101-116
• /
• 2015

Recently, due to the development of smart devices and social media, vast amounts of information with the various forms were accumulated. Particularly, considerable research efforts are being directed towards analyzing unstructured big data to resolve various social problems. Accordingly, focus of data-driven decision-making is being moved from structured data analysis to unstructured one. Also, in the field of recommendation system, which is the typical area of data-driven decision-making, the need of using unstructured data has been steadily increased to improve system performance. Approaches to improve the performance of recommendation systems can be found in two aspects- improving algorithms and acquiring useful data with high quality. Traditionally, most efforts to improve the performance of recommendation system were made by the former approach, while the latter approach has not attracted much attention relatively. In this sense, efforts to utilize unstructured data from variable sources are very timely and necessary. Particularly, as the interests of users are directly connected with their needs, identifying the interests of the user through unstructured big data analysis can be a crew for improving performance of recommendation systems. In this sense, this study proposes the methodology of improving recommendation system by measuring interests of the user. Specially, this study proposes the method to quantify interests of the user by analyzing user's internet usage patterns, and to predict user's repurchase based upon the discovered preferences. There are two important modules in this study. The first module predicts repurchase probability of each category through analyzing users' purchase history. We include the first module to our research scope for comparing the accuracy of traditional purchase-based prediction model to our new model presented in the second module. This procedure extracts purchase history of users. The core part of our methodology is in the second module. This module extracts users' interests by analyzing news articles the users have read. The second module constructs a correspondence matrix between topics and news articles by performing topic modeling on real world news articles. And then, the module analyzes users' news access patterns and then constructs a correspondence matrix between articles and users. After that, by merging the results of the previous processes in the second module, we can obtain a correspondence matrix between users and topics. This matrix describes users' interests in a structured manner. Finally, by using the matrix, the second module builds a model for predicting repurchase probability of each category. In this paper, we also provide experimental results of our performance evaluation. The outline of data used our experiments is as follows. We acquired web transaction data of 5,000 panels from a company that is specialized to analyzing ranks of internet sites. At first we extracted 15,000 URLs of news articles published from July 2012 to June 2013 from the original data and we crawled main contents of the news articles. After that we selected 2,615 users who have read at least one of the extracted news articles. Among the 2,615 users, we discovered that the number of target users who purchase at least one items from our target shopping mall 'G' is 359. In the experiments, we analyzed purchase history and news access records of the 359 internet users. From the performance evaluation, we found that our prediction model using both users' interests and purchase history outperforms a prediction model using only users' purchase history from a view point of misclassification ratio. In detail, our model outperformed the traditional one in appliance, beauty, computer, culture, digital, fashion, and sports categories when artificial neural network based models were used. Similarly, our model outperformed the traditional one in beauty, computer, digital, fashion, food, and furniture categories when decision tree based models were used although the improvement is very small.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.52 no.6
• /
• pp.529-539
• /
• 2019

Purpose: Sprouts of evening primrose (Oenothera laciniata, OL) were reported to have high contents of flavonoids and potent antioxidant activity. This study examined the antioxidant and antiobesity activities of OL sprouts to determine if they could be a natural health-beneficial resource preventing obesity and oxidative stress. Methods: OL sprouts were extracted with 50% ethanol, evaporated, and lyophilized (OLE). The in vitro antioxidant activity of OLE was examined using four different tests. The antiobesity activity and in vivo antioxidant activity from OLE consumption were examined using high fat diet-induced obese (DIO) C57BL/6 mice. Results: The IC₅₀ for the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging and superoxide dismutase (SOD)-like activities of OLE were 26.2 ㎍/mL and 327.6 ㎍/mL, respectively. OLE exhibited the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) activity of 56.7 ㎍ ascorbic acid eq./mL at 100 ㎍/mL, and an increased glutathione level by 65.1% at 200 ㎍/mL compared to the control in the hUC-MSC stem cells. In an animal study, oral treatment with 50 mg or 100 mg of OLE/kg body weight for 14 weeks reduced the body weight gain, visceral fat content, fat cell size, blood leptin, and triglyceride levels, as well as the atherogenic index compared to the high fat diet control group (HFC) (p < 0.05). The blood malondialdehyde (MDA) level and the catalase and SOD-1 activities in adipose tissue were reduced significantly by the OLE treatment compared to HFC as well (p < 0.05). In epididymal adipose tissue, the OLE treatment reduced the mRNA expression of leptin, PPAR-γ and FAS significantly (p < 0.05) compared to HFC while it increased adiponectin expression (p < 0.05). Conclusion: OLE consumption has potent antioxidant and antiobesity activities via the suppression of oxidative stress and lipogenesis in DIO mice. Therefore, OLE could be a good candidate as a natural resource to develop functional food products that prevent obesity and oxidative stress.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.34 no.4
• /
• pp.14-25
• /
• 2016

This study aims to investigate what flowering plant Jeongjo loved, the attitudes and the reasons, and their implications. The study method was to investigate the contents and meaning in the historical records and to describe their interpretation. Jeongjo's life was consistent with very abstinent life style. His food, clothing and shelter were simple, and he did not show the interests in music, various arts and craft, women, and so on. He did not even show his interest in the flowers and plants of fairyland, beautiful flowers and plants. Jeongjo knew various kinds of flowers, and he was proficient in artistic expressions such as literature or painting with flower material. Due to this kind of attitude, there were few cases to demonstrate his taste on the specific flowering plant. The only one that Jeongjo revealed as his favorite flower was the pomegranate. However, the pomegranate was not the simple flowering plant as the subject of enjoying to Jeongjo. The pomegranate has the meaning of indicator plant to indicate the season of rice farming. Therefore, he made it to be the intermediary to indicate the farming season, which counted a few. Besides, Jeongjo who was threatened by the trials of assassination to him in his early throne period utilized 5,600 pomegranate flowerpots as the barricade of his shelter by arraying them with the type of stone piles in $B{\bar{a}}zh{\grave{e}}nt{\acute{u}}$(八陣圖). The use of Jeongjo's pomegranate flowerpots was not related to the visual utilization like ornament at all, which was very unique case. From multiple records, it was found that the pomegranate was the flower to be with Jeongjo in his period of reign. It is remarkable that the reason why Jeongjo kept pomegranate for a long time like this had the difference from enjoying practice on the ordinary flowering plant. This study has the limitation to be conducted depending on the Korean translated data. Further studies are required according to the translation performance of new historical records.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.34 no.1
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2001

Total upland area for cultivating the vegetable crops in the Alpine soils of Northeastern South Korea has been extending its limit to meet the increasing demand of vegetable food in recent decades. About 70% of these alpine soils are located in over 7% of the slope and most of vegetable crops have been cultivated intensively without practicing the best management systems. Thus, soil erosion and continuous cropping system have degenerated the soil fertility and shown detrimental effects on water quality. We initiated an intensive and extensive investigation to characterize the fertility problems encountered in these uplands. Objectives of this paper were to characterize the fertility status in the Alpine soils cultivated with vegetable crops for many years and to provide the recommendations for adequate soil management measures including fertilization and erosion control. Soils in general have good drainage with textural classes of loam or sandy loam. Their topographical characteristics tended to lead them to shallow plow layers, and the steepness of the terrain created erosion hazard. Of the soils examined, about 11% of uplands over 30% gradient was found in need of an urgent reforestation. A high content of gravel and firm hardness of soil attributed to inhibit the utilization of farm machinery and plant-root development. The average soil pH 5.6 was slightly low relative to pH 5.70 of the national average. Organic matter content was high compared with 2.0% of national average, but decreased with the prolonged cultivation periods. Available $P_2O_5$ concentration was unusually high due to the consequence of over dose application with chemical and organic fertilizers. Exchangeable cations as Ca, Mg, and K were appeared to be decreased in these regions with prolonging the cultivation periods. There were no significant differences in cation exchange capacity (CEC) and electrical conductivity (EC) among locations. Heavy metal contents were mostly lower than the threshold of danger level designated by Soil Environment Conservation Law of South Korea. Results indicated that a proper countermeasure and the best management practice should be immediately implemented to conserve the top soil and fertility in the Alpine regions.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
• /
• v.45 no.4
• /
• pp.375-381
• /
• 2018

The consumption of oats (Avena sativa L.) with high nutritional utility is accelerating due to the increased consumers' demand for functional foods. In Korea, naked oats are used as food, while covered oats are used for animal feed. However, it is difficult to distinguish naked oats from covered oats when the husk is removed from the grains by a special process. The present study was carried out to investigate experimental methods that would be beneficial in the segregation of different types of oats after husk removal. Grain quality-related biochemical compounds were analyzed in a bid to differentiate the oat dehulling characteristics. In addition, 61 SSR markers were examined for genetic relationship and variety identification of oats using five naked and seven covered oat varieties. Results showed that, the contents of protein, lipid, and ${\beta}-glucan$ were not significantly different among the oat varieties and this could not be used as an index for distinguishing oats husk character. However, in the fatty acid composition ratio,, naked oats had a higher ratio of stearic acid (C18:0) and oleic acid (C18:1) than covered oats, and covered oats had a higher ratio of linoleic acid (C18:2) and linoleic acid (C18:3) than naked oats. The assessment of SSR marker genotype revealed that 33 polymorphic bands among 12 oat varieties and 1 variety could be distinguished through the combination of polymorphic markers thus indicating the usability of these markers for variety identification in oats.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.28 no.11
• /
• pp.1347-1353
• /
• 2018

The fermentation of non-digestible soy meal can convert polysaccharides into many compounds that have a wide variety of biological functions. Bacillus strains are capable of hydrolyzing non-digestible saccharides, such as melibiose, raffinose, and stachyose, found in soy meal components. A highly active ${\alpha}$-galactosidase (${\alpha}$-d-galactoside galactohydrolase, EC 3.2.1.22) was isolated from a bacterium in a traditional Korean fermented medicinal herb preparation. The isolate, T2-16, was identified as Bacillus coagulans based on its 16S rRNA sequence and biochemical properties, and the strain was named Bacillus coagulans NRR-1207. When incubated in 10%(w/v) skim milk, Bacillus coagulans NRR1207 caused a decrease in the pH of the culture medium, as well as an increase in titratable acidity and viable cell counts. This strain also showed higher activities of ${\alpha}$-galactosidase, ${\beta}$-galactosidase, ${\alpha}$-glucosidase, naphthol-AS-BO-phosphohydrolase, and acid phosphatase when compared to other enzymes. It hydrolyzed oligomeric substrates, such as raffinose and stachyose, and liberated galactose, indicating that the Bacillus coagulans NRR1207 ${\alpha}$-galactosidase hydrolyzed the ${\alpha}$-1,6 glycoside linkage. These results suggest that the decreased stachyose and raffinose contents observed in fermented soy meal are due to this ${\alpha}$-galactosidase activity. Bacillus coagulans NRR1207 therefore has potential probiotic activity and could be utilized in feed manufacturing, as well as for hydrolyzing non-digestible soy meal components.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
• /
• v.63 no.4
• /
• pp.331-337
• /
• 2018

The content of nutrients, proteins, and oils of crop seeds is affected by global climate change due to the increase in temperature. Information regarding the effects of increased temperature on soybean seed nutrition is limited despite its vital role in seed quality and food security. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of increasing temperature on seed nutrient, protein, and oil content in two soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr] cultivars (Daewonkong and Pungsannamulkong during the reproductive period in a temperature-gradient chamber. Four temperature treatments, Ta (near ambient temperature), $Ta+1^{\circ}C$ (ambient temperature+$1^{\circ}C$), $Ta+2^{\circ}C$ (ambient temperature+$2^{\circ}C$), $Ta+3^{\circ}C$ (ambient temperature+$3^{\circ}C$), and $Ta+4^{\circ}C$ (ambient temperature+$4^{\circ}C$), were established by dividing the rows along the temperature gradient. At maturity, increased temperature did not significantly affect the concentration of P, K, Ca, and Mg. The protein and oil content was significantly correlated with temperature. At maturity, the protein content of DWK and PSNK was reduced at $Ta+4^{\circ}C$. The oil content was the highest at $Ta+4^{\circ}C$ in DWK, whereas it decreased in PSNK at $Ta+4^{\circ}C$. Consequently, the biochemical composition of soybean seeds changed with the increase in temperature. These results illustrate the effects of temperature on soybean seed nutrient, protein, and oil content, which can help improve soybean quality at different temperatures. Thus, the biochemical composition of crop seeds can be changed in accordance with nutritional requirements for the benefit of human health in the future.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.287-297
• /
• 2021

Cornus officinalis Siebold & Zucc. is traditionally used as an edible and medicinal plant in many countries in East Asia. Previous studies have shown the pharmacological potential of extracts and components of C. officinalis, but comparative analysis of the composition of the leaf, stem, and fruit extracts has been insufficient to date. In the present study, the content of active antioxidant and anti-inflammatory ingredients was verified in different C. officinalis parts (under-ripe sansuyu, ripe sansuyu, seed, leaf, stem, and dried sansuyu). One active component, morroniside, was high in fruit (under-ripe and ripe sansuyu), while loganin was high in fruit (under-ripe sansuyu) and cornin was high in seeds. Total polyphenol contents were highest in fruit (ripe sansuyu) and flavonoids were highest in leaves. DPPH radical scavenging activity was highest in leaves, followed by seeds and then ripe sansuyu extract. The anti-inflammatory efficacy of leaf extracts of C. officinalis (LCO) was further investigated by measuring their effects on levels of nitric oxide (NO) and the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-6 in RAW 264.7 macrophages. Non-cytotoxic concentrations of LCO effectively decreased the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced expression of inducible NO synthase, resulting in decreased NO production. LCO also significantly suppressed LPS-induced production and expression of IL-1β and IL-6. Taken together, the present findings suggest that C. officinalis leaves have potential as natural materials for the development of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.64 no.2
• /
• pp.113-119
• /
• 2021

Olive (Olea europaea L.) leaves, a raw material for health functional foods and cosmetics have abundant polyphenols including oleuropein (major bioactive compound) with various biological activities: antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer activity, and inhibit platelet activation. Oleuropein has been reported as skin protectant, antioxidant, anti-ageing, anti-cancer, anti-inflammation, anti-atherogenic, anti-viral, and anti-microbial activity. Despite oleuropein is the important compound in olive leaves, there is still no quantitative approach to reveal oleuropein content in commercial products. Therefore, a validated method of analysis has to develop for oleuropein. In this study, the components and oleuropein content in 10 types of products were analyzed using a developed method with ultra-performance liquid chromatography to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, charge of aerosol detector, and photodiode array. The total of 18 compounds including iridoids (1, 3, 4, 14, and 16-18), coumarin (2), phenylethanoids (5, 9, and 11), flavonoids (6-8, 10, 12, and 13), lignan (15), were tentatively identified in the leaves extract based high resolution mass spectrometry data, and the content of oleuropein in each product was almost identical between two detection methods. The oleuropein in three commercial product (A, G, H) was contained more over the suggested content, and it of five products (B, E, H, I, J) were analyzed within 5-10% error range. However, the two products (C, D) were found far lower than suggested contents. This study provides that analytical results of oleuropein could be a potential information for the quality control of leaf extract for a manufactured functional food.