• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.61-66
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• 2011

P2Y receptors are metabotropic G-protein-coupled receptors, which are involved in many important biologic functions in the central nervous system including retina. Subtypes of P2Y receptors in retinal tissue vary according to the species and the cell types. We examined the molecular and pharmacologic profiles of P2Y purinoceptors in retinoblastoma cell, which has not been identified yet. To achieve this goal, we used $Ca^{2+}$ imaging technique and western blot analysis in WERI-Rb-1 cell, a human retinoblastoma cell line. ATP ($10\;{\mu}M$) elicited strong but transient $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ increase in a concentration dependent manner from more than 80% of the WERI-Rb-1 cells (n=46). Orders of potency of P2Y agonists in evoking $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ transients were 2MeS-ATP>ATP>>UTP=${\alpha}{\beta}$-MeATP, which was compatible with the subclass of $P2Y_1$ receptor. The $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ transients evoked by applications of 2MeS-ATP and/or ATP were also profoundly suppressed in the presence of $P2Y_1$ selective blocker (MRS 2179; $30\;{\mu}M$). $P2Y_1$ receptor expression in WERI-Rb-1 cells was also identified by using western blot. Taken together, $P2Y_1$ receptor is mainly expressed in a retinoblastoma cell, which elicits $Ca^{2+}$ release from internal $Ca^{2+}$ storage sites via the phospholipase C-mediated pathway. $P2Y_1$ receptor activation in retinoblastoma cell could be a useful model to investigate the role of purinergic $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ signaling in neural tissue as well as to find a novel therapeutic target to this lethal cancer.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2010

Recently lots of attention has been paid to gene set analysis for identifying differentially expressed gene-sets between two sample groups. Unlike earlier approaches, the gene set analysis enables us to find significant gene-sets along with their functional characteristics. For this reason, various novel approaches have been suggested lately for gene set analysis. As one of such, PAGE is a parametric approach that employs average difference (AD) as an expression metric to quantify expression differences between two sample groups and assumes that the distribution of gene scores is normal. This approach is preferred to non-parametric approach because of more effective performance. However, the metric AD does not reflect either gene expression intensities or variances over samples in calculating gene scores. Thus, in this paper, we investigate the usefulness of several other expression metrics for parametric gene-set analysis, which consider actual expression intensities of genes or their expression variances over samples. For this purpose, we examined three expression metrics, WAD (weighted average difference), FC (Fisher's criterion), and Abs_SNR (Absolute value of signal-to-noise ratio) for parametric gene set analysis and evaluated their experimental results.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.47
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• pp.273-294
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• 2017

Korea has suffered numerous casualties due to a lot of accidents caused by safety insufficiency in recent years. Therefore, safety education is more important than ever before, and 'how to educate with what contents' is an important subject. Especially, experience education is effective rather than theoretical education because of the nature of safety education. However, it is not easy to design and develop these safety education programs. There is not much opportunity to access first-aid training, which is a part of safety education, unless it is compulsory to learn through public institutions. As a result, program utilization on safety education in Korea is still insufficient to what it should be. With that taken into account, this study proposed an effective serious game with fun and immersion for medical first-aid education. To do this, we analyzed five medical games through 20 cases of first-aid applications and elicited five factors that enhance the usability of serious games. With an analysis of five medical games, we selected one game to borrow the game rules, and applied the elicited five elements in the forms of level-up structure, iterative learning, compensation outcomes, competition system, and information transfer. The proposed medical education functional games should have 1) a character that plays a role of a patient, 2) a narrative flow that shows the situation, 3) the user should judge the situation and induce first aid. 4) compensation, levels, and simple repetition should be designed, and 5) information should be shared with the others in the given community. The results of this study is believed to contribute to enhance the medical emergency education in Korea.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.530-537
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• 2014

Moisture is a major factor causing the deteriorative physical change, microbial growth, and chemical reaction of the products. In this study, the moisture absorbing composite films have been prepared with moisture absorbing material of polyacrylic acid partial sodium salt (PAPSS) impregnated on LLDPE polymer for the functional packaging applications. The results showed that PAPSS impregnated film illustrated uniformly dispersed PAPSS particles in the LLDPE polymer matrix. The transparency of the PAPSS impregnated film decreased slightly at higher PAPSS concentrations. An increase in the PAPSS content for moisture-absorbing films showed a similar decrease in tensile strength, percent elongation at break, and tear strength. Their values of films impregnated with PAPSS of 0.5, 1, and 2% showed no significant difference. Meanwhile, 4% PAPSS films significantly decreased the values of mechanical properties compared to the films impregnated with different PAPSS levels. Values of the oxygen permeability and water vapor permeability for PAPSS impregnated films decreased significantly with greater PAPSS. The results indicate that 4% PAPSS impregnated in LLDPE films had high affinity of moisture absorbencies compared to the other films. The mathematical equation that best described the moisture sorption isotherm of each film sample was the GAB equation at $25^{\circ}C$. The crystallization and melting temperatures of PAPSS films were influenced by the addition of PAPSS material, but showed good thermal stability.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.227-236
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• 2016

Dynamic positron emission tomography(dPET) is widely used medical imaging modality that can provide both physiological and functional neuro-image for diagnosing various brain disease. However, dPET images have low spatial-resolution and high noise level during spatio-temporal analysis (three-dimensional spatial information + one-dimensional time information), there by limiting clinical utilization. In order to overcome these issues for the spatio-temporal analysis, a novel computational technique was introduced in this paper. The computational technique based on singular value decomposition classifies multiple independent components. Signal components can be distinguished from the classified independent components. The results show that signal to noise ratio was improved up to 30% compared with the original images. We believe that the proposed computational technique in dPET can be useful tool for various clinical / research applications.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.45-50
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• 2018

The functional nanomaterials of fluorescent dye-doped silica nanoparticles(NPs) are applied to bio applications such as bio-labeling of DNA micro-array, and bio-imaging. Organic dye-doped fluorescent silica NPs exhibit excellent bio-compatibility, non-toxic, and highly hydrophilic properties. In this study, organic fluorescent dyes were dissolved in ethanol, and deionized(DI) water. Organic fluorescent dyes were physically adsorbed to silica NPs and chemically doped to silica NPs. The fluorescence characteristics(FLC) was investigated by UV lamp irradiation of 365 nm wavelength. As results, the FLC of dye-doped silica NPs exhibits better than dye-adsorbed silica NPs and the FLC was improved with the increase of concentration of doped-dyes. The fluorescent organic dyes were well dissolved in ethanol than DI water. The photostability of dye-doped silica NPs was superior than pure fluorescent organic dye. The FLC of optimized dye-doped silica NPs would be applied to agent of non-invasive fluorescence bio-imaging in live cell and in vivo.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.963-968
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• 2009

Liquid crystal (LC; E7 and/or ML-0249)-embedded, poly(vinylidenefluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVdF-co-HFP)-based, polymer electrolytes were prepared for use in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The electrolytes contained 1-methyl-3-propylimidazolium iodide (PMII), tetrabutylammonium iodide (TBAI), and iodine ($I_2$), which participate in the $I_3^-/I^-$ redox couple. The incorporation of photochemically stable PVdF-co-HFP in the DSSCs created a stable polymer electrolyte that resisted leakage and volatilization. DSSCs, with liquid crystal(LC)-embedded PVdF-co-HFP-based polymer electrolytes between the amphiphilic ruthenium dye N719 absorbed to the nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ photoanode and the Pt counter electrode, were fabricated. These DSSCs displayed enhanced redox couple reduction and reduced charge recombination in comparison to that fabricated from the conventional PVdF-co-HFP-based polymer electrolyte. The behavior of the polymer electrolyte was improved by the addition of optimized amounts of plasticizers, such as ethylene carbonate (EC) and propylene carbonate (PC). The significantly increased short-circuit current density ($J_{sc}$, $14.60\;mA/cm^2$) and open-circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$, 0.68 V) of these DSSCs led to a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.42% and a fill factor of 0.65 under a standard light intensity of $100\;mW/cm^2$ irradiation of AM 1.5 sunlight. A DSSC fabricated by using E7-embedded PVdF-co-HFP-based polymer electrolyte exhibited a maximum incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of 50%.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.32-45
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• 2000

This paper presents the analytic derivation of the SINR, when a linear array antenna is accommodated into the cellular CDMA basestation receiver, in relation to the two major performance effecting factors in beamforming(BF) applications, i. e., the direction selectivity, which refers to the narrowness of the mainbeam width, and the direction-of-arrival(DOA) estimation accuracy. The analytically derived results are compared with the operation simulation of the receiver realized with the several BF algorithms and their agreements are confirmed, consequently verifying the correctness of the analysis and the operation simulation. In order to investigate separately the effects of the errors occurring in the direction estimation and in the interference suppression, which are the two major functional components of general BF algorithms, both the algorithms of steering BF and the minimum- variance- distortionless-response(MVDR) BF are applied to the analysis. A signal model to reflect the spatially scattering phenomenon of the RF waves entering into the .:nay antenna, which directly affects on the accuracy of the BF algorithm's direction estimation, is also suggested in this paper and applied to the analysis and the operation simulation. It is confirmed from the results that the enhancement of the direction selectivity of the away antenna is not desirable in view of both the implementation economy and the BF algorithm's robustness to the erroneous factors. Such a trade-off characteristics is significant in the sense that it can be capitalized to obtain an economic means of BF implementation that does not severely deteriorate its performance while ensuring the robustness to the erroneous effects, consequently manifesting the significance of the analysis results of this paper that can be used as a design reference in developing BF algorithms to the cellular CDMA system.

• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.251-258
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• 2000

These studies were conducted to investigate the prey consumption and suppression of cotton aphid and green peach aphid by Chrysopa pallens Ramber as a predator. The 3$^{rd}$ instar of C. pallets fed on 29.8, 77.9, 133.6, and 155.7 individuals of apterous Aphis goussypii Glover a day at 17,22, 27, and 32$^{\circ}C$, respectively. A preovipositing female fed on 73.1 individuals, ovipositing female on 86.6 individuals, and adult male on 69.7 individuals of apterous Myzus persicae (Sulzer) a day at the 27$^{\circ}C$. The functional response curve of the larvae and adults of C. pallens to the densities of A. gossypii indicated Helling’s Type II: the consumption of prey by the C. pallens increased with the prey density but the consumption rate decreased. The attack rate of 3rd instar of C. pallens was the highest among the 2nd instar, 3$^{rd}$ instar, adult male and adult female, and handling time was the shortest. The critical ratio of the predator vs. the prey to effectively suppress the population of A. gossypii by releasing C. pallets eggs was 1 : 4 on red pepper and egg plant, and 1 : 3 on cucumber. Release of second larval stave of C. pallens at the ratio of 1 : 30 of the predator vs. the prey controlled satisfactorily A. gossypii on red pepper, and 1 : 20 on cucumber and tomato. The three-times introduction of the eggs of C. pallens was as effective as four applications of insecticides from mid-June to late September.r.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.726-737
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• 2017

Carotenoids are isoprenoids with a long polyene chain containing 3 to 15 conjugated double bonds, which determines their absorption spectrum. They typically consist of a $C_{40}$ hydrocarbon backbone often modified by different oxygen-containing functional groups, to yield cyclic or acyclic xanthophylls. Much work has also been focused on the identification, production, and utilization of natural sources of carotenoid (plants, microorganisms and crustacean by-products) as an alternative to the synthetic pigment which currently covers most of the world markets. Nevertheless, only a few carotenoids (${\beta}-carotene$, lycopene, astaxanthin, canthaxanthin, and lutein) can be produced commercially by fermentation or isolation from the small number of abundant natural sources. The market and demand for carotenoids is anticipated to increase dramatically with the discovery that carotenoids exhibit significant anti-carcinogenic activities and play an important role in the prevention of chronic diseases. The increasing importance of carotenoids in the feed, nutraceutical food and pharmaceutical markets has renewed by efforts to find ways of producing additional carotenoid structures in useful quantities. Because microorganisms and plants synthesize hundreds of different complex chemical carotenoid structures and a number of carotenoid biosynthetic pathways have been elucidated on a molecular level, metabolic and genetic engineering of microorganisms can provide a means towards economic production of carotenoid structures that are otherwise inaccessible. The aim of this article is to review our current understanding of carotenoid formation, to explain the perceived benefits of carotenoid in the diet and review the efforts that have been made to increase carotenoid in certain microorganisms.