• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.267-271
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• 2014

Accurate determination of in vivo oocyte maturation is particularly critical for dog cloning compared to other assisted reproductive technologies because oocytes in metaphase II stage have to be recovered in order to undergo somatic cell nuclear transfer right after its recovery. The aim of present study was to evaluate the reliability and to set a reference range of a chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA) compared to radioimmunoassay (RIA) method to retrieve in vivo matured oocytes. Serum progesterone concentration during proestrus and estrus was analyzed by RIA and CLEIA to determine ovulation day (Day 0). On Day 3, in vivo oocytes were recovered surgically and evaluated microscopically maturation status after staining nucleus with bisbenzimidazole dye. Mean progesterone concentration by CLEIA ($7.64{\pm}0.06ng/ml$) was significantly higher than by RIA ($6.46{\pm}0.04ng/ml$, P < 0.0001). It was not different between CLEIA ($10.01{\pm}0.34ng/ml$) and RIA values ($7.91{\pm}0.14ng/ml$, P < 0.05) on Day 0, but significantly higher CLEIA level on Day -1 and Day 1 ($6.41{\pm}0.15$ and $14.25{\pm}0.44ng/ml$) was assessed compared to RIA ($4.95{\pm}0.10$ and $11.29{\pm}0.34ng/ml$). However, with both methods, progesterone level was significantly increased from Day -1 to Day 2. To determine oocyte maturation with CLEIA method, a wider and higher reference range has to be considered.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.345-358
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• 2018

In this study, we have performed electron probe micro analyzer (EPMA), X-ray differaction (XRD), inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy (ICP), Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy (FT-Raman), far-infrared (FIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and pH-DO Analyses for characterizing medicinal mineralogy aspect of the black tourmaline (Shantung, china), black and pink tourmaline (Minas Geraris, Brazil), black touemaline (Daeyu mine, Korea). In addition, heating effects of the tourmaline sauna as well as the effects of tourmaline powder-added soap on skin troubles have been investigated. It has been revealed that chemical composition of the tourmaline is either high in Fe-, Al-, B-rich types. Ratio of the K-Ca, Na-K, and Fe-B reflects the component change property of solid solution. $CaO/CaO+Na_2O$ and MgO/FeO+MgO ratio show high positive correlation. When tourmaline reacts with distilled water, extended reaction time DO values approximately decrease and it stabilizes at DO = 10. Otherwise, pH values increase until 6 hours and it stabilizes at pH = 8 after 24 hours. Distilled water changes to alkaline when it reacts with tourmaline powder and particles. Tourmaline showed lower absorption spectrum strength and transmittance at short wave, where absorption spectrum wavelength and strength were determined by the content of the composition elements and characteristics of crystallography. Increase of the Fe content has been confirmed to be the cause for the reduction of irradiation. For the chemical composition and spectral property of the tourmaline particle samples, it has been found that Si and Fe contents show positive correlation with Far-Infrared irradiation, while Al and Mg contents show negative correlation. For tourmaline powder, it has been confirmed that $^{17}O-NMR$ FWHM (full width at half maximum) decreases when reacts with distilled water. Tourmaline sauna (approximately $100^{\circ}C$) was found to increase $0.5-1.5^{\circ}C$ of body temperature, average of 12 heartbeat, and 10mg Hg of blood pressure. Tourmaline soap had very good aesthetic effect to skin and was confirmed to have above the average improvements to skin troubles (e.g., allergy or atopy).

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.268-277
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• 2016

This study aimed to investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of the ethanol extract from Chondrus ocellatus Holmes (COHEE) in RAW 264.7 cells and in a mouse ear edema model, by measuring the production of lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory response mediators. There were no cytotoxic effects on the proliferation of macrophages treated with COHEE compared with the control. COHEE inhibited the production of nitric oxide and pro-inflammatory cytokines [interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and IL-1β]. The extract also reduced the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, cyclooxygenase-2, nuclear factor-κB p65, and phosphorylated mitogen-activated protein kinase in a dose-dependent manner. In the croton-oil-induced ear edema model, COHEE decreased the formation of mouse ear edema at the highest dose compared with the control, and histological analysis revealed that the epidermal/dermal tissue thickness and mast cell numbers were reduced. Therefore, these results suggest that COHEE may be a promising topical anti-inflammatory therapeutic material through its action of modulating NF-κB and the MAPK signaling pathway.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.137-148
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• 1999

Purpose of the present study was to find the optimal ovulation induction medicine for the maturation and development of immature oocytes and culture media for 2-cell embryos in the mouse model. ICR female mouse aged 6 to 8 weeks, were stimulated with 5 IU PMSG injection. At 47 to 50 hour post-PMSG injection, ovaries were dissected out and oocytes-cumulus complexes were punctured. The oocyte-cumulus complexes were cultured in media containing various ovulation induction medicine, CC, HMG and Metrodin for 18 hours. Female ICR mice were stimulated with 5 IU PMSG and 48 hours later were injected 5 IU of hCG, then female and male mice were mated. At 48 hour post-hCG injection, oviducts were dissected out and 2-cell embryos were flushed. The 2-cell embryos were cultured in various media, Ham's F-10 media of milli-Q water $(3^{\circ})$, Ham's F-10 media of HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography, Baxter) water, Medicult media, HTF (human tubal fluid) media for 96 hours. The results were as follows. 1. When the oocytes-cumulus complexes were cultured in $10^{-9}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-8}{\mu}g/ml$ of CC, those were suppressed in meiotic maturation $(28.2{\sim}33.7%)$. Whereas the oocytes-cumulus complexes were cultured in $10^{-7}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-4}{\mu}g/ml$, these were not effected in meiotic maturation $(54.5{\sim}72.7%)$. 2. When the oocytes-cumulus complexes were cultured in $10^{-4}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-1}{\mu}g/ml$ of Metrodin, those were suppressed in meiotic maturation $(35.7{\sim}41.5%)$. Meanwhile the oocytes-cumulus complexes were cultured in $10^{-7}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-5}{\mu}g/ml$, those were not effected in meiotic maturation $(54.2{\sim}70.3%)$. 3. When the oocytes-cumulus complexes were cultured in $10^{-5}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-4}{\mu}g/ml$ of HMG, those were suppressed in meiotic maturation $(48.2{\sim}50.4%)$. As being cultured in $10^{-7}{\mu}g/ml{\sim}10^{-6}{\mu}g/ml$, increased in meiotic maturation $(75.8{\sim}80.7%)$. 4. When the 2-cell embryos were cultured in Ham's F-10 media of milli-Q water $(3^{\circ})$, Ham's F-10 media of HPLC (high performance liquid chromatograpy, Baxter) water, Medicult media, HTF (human tubal fluid) media, developmental rates to blastocyst and hatching for 96 hour were 50.0%, 45.2%, 71.5% and 95.6%, respectively.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.48
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• pp.85-116
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze conditions that robots depicted in cinematographic works like animations or movies sympathize with and form an attachment with the nuclear person and organize characterizing strategies for emotional sympathetic robots. Along with the development of technology, the areas of artificial intelligence and robots are no longer considered to belong to science fiction but as realistic issues. Therefore, this author assumes that the expressive characteristics of emotional sympathetic robots created by cinematographic works should be used as meaningful factors in expressively embodying human-friendly service robots to be distributed widely afterwards, that is, in establishing the features of characters. To lay the grounds for it, this research has begun. As the subjects of analysis, this researcher has chosen robot characters whose emotional intimacy with the main person is clearly observed among those found in movies and animations produced after the 1920 when robot's contemporary concept was declared. Also, to understand robots' appearance and behavioral tendency, this study (1) has classified robots' external impressions into five types (human-like, cartoon, tool-like, artificial bring, pet or creature) and (2) has classified behavioral tendencies considered to be the outer embodiment of personality by using DiSC, the tool to diagnose behavioral patterns. Meanwhile, it has been observed that robots equipped with high emotional intimacy are all strongly independent about their duties and indicate great emotional acceptance. Therefore, 'influence' and 'Steadiness' types show great emotional acceptance, the influencing type tends to be highly independent, and the 'Conscientiousness' type tends to indicate less emotional acceptance and independency in general. Yet, according to the analysis on external impressions, appearance factors hardly have any significant relationship with emotional sympathy. It implies that regarding the conditions of robots equipped with great emotional sympathy, emotional sympathy grounded on communication exerts more crucial effects than first impression similarly to the process of forming interpersonal relationship in reality. Lastly, to study the characters of robots, it is absolutely needed to have consilient competence embracing different areas widely. This author also has felt that only with design factors or personality factors, it is hard to estimate robot characters and also analyze a vast amount of information demanded in sympathy with humans entirely. However, this researcher will end this thesis as the foundation for it expecting that the general artistic value of animations can be used preciously afterwards in developing robots that have to be studied interdisciplinarily.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.208-214
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• 2004

Purpose: The prognosis of neonates with cholestasis is not clear. Some factors, such as high peak bilirubin levels and liver histologic findings have been claimed to affect the prognosis adversely. Our study aims to define which factors influence the prognosis of neonatal intrahepatic cholestasis. Methods: Retrospective reviews of the medical records were performed in 32 cases with neonatal intrahepatic cholestasis, who were admitted to Department of Pediatrics, Pusan National University Hospital from July 1995 to July 2002. Neonates were classified into 2 groups according to the duration of elevated serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels more or less than 6 months. The data, such as biochemical, histopathologic and radiologic findings, were compared in both groups. Biochemical data included mean peak level of serum ALT, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, and alkaline phosphatase. Histologic parameters related to lobular architecture, fibrosis, inflammatory infiltration and degenerative features of hepatocytes were arbitrary estimated on a scale of 1 to 3. Results: There were 19 males and 13 females, whose mean age was 48 days (14~77 days). The peak serum ALT levels were higher in the poor outcome group. Ductular proliferation and portoportal bridging were more severe in the poor outcome group. But the degree of multinucleated hepatocytes, hepatocellular swelling and canalicular plug did not appear to be significantly related to the long-term outcome. The DISIDA scintigraphy by visualization time of gall bladder and intestine was not useful in predicting outcome of neonatal intrahepatic cholestasis. Conclusion: Neonates who have intrahepatic cholestasis with high serum ALT levels, severe ductular proliferation and portoportal bridging in the liver biopsy specimen should be carefully followed up because they may have a poor prognosis.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2012

This study analyses the difference of contents and tones of arguments among three Korean major newspapers, the Kyunghyang Shinmoon, the HanKyoreh, and the Dong-A Ilbo. It is commonly accepted that newspapers in Korea explicitly deliver their own tone of arguments when they talk about some sensitive issues and topics. It could be controversial if readers of newspapers read the news without being aware of the type of tones of arguments because the contents and the tones of arguments can affect readers easily. Thus it is very desirable to have a new tool that can inform the readers of what tone of argument a newspaper has. This study presents the results of clustering and classification techniques as part of text mining analysis. We focus on six main subjects such as Culture, Politics, International, Editorial-opinion, Eco-business and National issues in newspapers, and attempt to identify differences and similarities among the newspapers. The basic unit of text mining analysis is a paragraph of news articles. This study uses a keyword-network analysis tool and visualizes relationships among keywords to make it easier to see the differences. Newspaper articles were gathered from KINDS, the Korean integrated news database system. KINDS preserves news articles of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, the HanKyoreh and the Dong-A Ilbo and these are open to the public. This study used these three Korean major newspapers from KINDS. About 3,030 articles from 2008 to 2012 were used. International, national issues and politics sections were gathered with some specific issues. The International section was collected with the keyword of 'Nuclear weapon of North Korea.' The National issues section was collected with the keyword of '4-major-river.' The Politics section was collected with the keyword of 'Tonghap-Jinbo Dang.' All of the articles from April 2012 to May 2012 of Eco-business, Culture and Editorial-opinion sections were also collected. All of the collected data were handled and edited into paragraphs. We got rid of stop-words using the Lucene Korean Module. We calculated keyword co-occurrence counts from the paired co-occurrence list of keywords in a paragraph. We made a co-occurrence matrix from the list. Once the co-occurrence matrix was built, we used the Cosine coefficient matrix as input for PFNet(Pathfinder Network). In order to analyze these three newspapers and find out the significant keywords in each paper, we analyzed the list of 10 highest frequency keywords and keyword-networks of 20 highest ranking frequency keywords to closely examine the relationships and show the detailed network map among keywords. We used NodeXL software to visualize the PFNet. After drawing all the networks, we compared the results with the classification results. Classification was firstly handled to identify how the tone of argument of a newspaper is different from others. Then, to analyze tones of arguments, all the paragraphs were divided into two types of tones, Positive tone and Negative tone. To identify and classify all of the tones of paragraphs and articles we had collected, supervised learning technique was used. The Na$\ddot{i}$ve Bayesian classifier algorithm provided in the MALLET package was used to classify all the paragraphs in articles. After classification, Precision, Recall and F-value were used to evaluate the results of classification. Based on the results of this study, three subjects such as Culture, Eco-business and Politics showed some differences in contents and tones of arguments among these three newspapers. In addition, for the National issues, tones of arguments on 4-major-rivers project were different from each other. It seems three newspapers have their own specific tone of argument in those sections. And keyword-networks showed different shapes with each other in the same period in the same section. It means that frequently appeared keywords in articles are different and their contents are comprised with different keywords. And the Positive-Negative classification showed the possibility of classifying newspapers' tones of arguments compared to others. These results indicate that the approach in this study is promising to be extended as a new tool to identify the different tones of arguments of newspapers.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.163-173
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• 1998

Nuclear medicine emission computed tomography(ECT) can be very useful to diagnose early stage of neuronal diseases and to measure theraputic results objectively, if we can quantitate energy metabolism, blood flow, biochemical processes, or dopamine receptor and transporter using ECT. However, physical factors including attenuation, scatter, partial volume effect, noise, and reconstruction algorithm make it very difficult to quantitate independent of type of SPECT. In this study, we quantitated the effects of attenuation and scatter using brain SPECT and three-dimensional brain phantom with and without applying their correction methods. Dual energy window method was applied for scatter correction. The photopeak energy window and scatter energy window were set to 140ke${\pm}$10% and 119ke${\pm}$6% and 100% of scatter window data were subtracted from the photopeak window prior to reconstruction. The projection data were reconstructed using Butterworth filter with cutoff frequency of 0.95cycles/cm and order of 10. Attenuation correction was done by Chang's method with attenuation coefficients of 0.12/cm and 0.15/cm for the reconstruction data without scatter correction and with scatter correction, respectively. For quantitation, regions of interest (ROIs) were drawn on the three slices selected at the level of the basal ganglia. Without scatter correction, the ratios of ROI average values between basal ganglia and background with attenuation correction and without attenuation correction were 2.2 and 2.1, respectively. However, the ratios between basal ganglia and background were very similar for with and without attenuation correction. With scatter correction, the ratios of ROI average values between basal ganglia and background with attenuation correction and without attenuation correction were 2.69 and 2.64, respectively. These results indicate that the attenuation correction is necessary for the quantitation. When true ratios between basal ganglia and background were 6.58, 4.68, 1.86, the measured ratios with scatter and attenuation correction were 76%, 80%, 82% of their true ratios, respectively. The approximate 20% underestimation could be partially due to the effect of partial volume and reconstruction algorithm which we have not investigated in this study, and partially due to imperfect scatter and attenuation correction methods that we have applied in consideration of clinical applications.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.190-197
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• 2011

Currently, the dose distribution calculation used by commercial treatment planning systems (TPSs) for high-dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is derived from point and line source approximation method recommended by AAPM Task Group 43 (TG-43). However, the study of Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is required in order to assess the accuracy of dose calculation around three-dimensional Ir-192 source. In this study, geometry factor was calculated using segmented sources integration method by dividing microSelectron HDR Ir-192 source into smaller parts. The Monte Carlo code (MCNPX 2.5.0) was used to calculate the dose rate $\dot{D}(r,\theta)$ at a point ($r,\theta$) away from a HDR Ir-192 source in spherical water phantom with 30 cm diameter. Finally, anisotropy function and radial dose function were calculated from obtained results. The obtained geometry factor was compared with that calculated from line source approximation. Similarly, obtained anisotropy function and radial dose function were compared with those derived from MCPT results by Williamson. The geometry factor calculated from segmented sources integration method and line source approximation was within 0.2% for $r{\geq}0.5$ cm and 1.33% for r=0.1 cm, respectively. The relative-root mean square error (R-RMSE) of anisotropy function obtained by this study and Williamson was 2.33% for r=0.25 cm and within 1% for r>0.5 cm, respectively. The R-RMSE of radial dose function was 0.46% at radial distance from 0.1 to 14.0 cm. The geometry factor acquired from segmented sources integration method and line source approximation was in good agreement for $r{\geq}0.1$ cm. However, application of segmented sources integration method seems to be valid, since this method using three-dimensional Ir-192 source provides more realistic geometry factor. The anisotropy function and radial dose function estimated from MCNPX in this study and MCPT by Williamson are in good agreement within uncertainty of Monte Carlo codes except at radial distance of r=0.25 cm. It is expected that Monte Carlo code used in this study could be applied to other sources utilized for brachytherapy.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 2015

This study was carried out to demonstrate the anti-inflammatory effect of tuna oil (TO) using LPS-induced inflammation responses and mouse models. First, nitric oxide (NO) and pro-inflammatory cytokines levels were suppressed up to 50% with increasing concentrations of TO without causing any cytotoxicity. Also, the expression of a variety of proteins, such as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), was suppressed in a dosedependent manner by treatment with TO. Furthermore, TO also inhibited the phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), including c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), and p38 protein kinase (p38). Moreover, in in vivo testing the formation of ear edema was reduced at the highest dose tested compared to that in the control, and a reduction of ear thickness and the number of mast cells was observed in histological analysis. In acute toxicity test, no mortalities occurred in mice administrated 5,000 mg/kg body weight of TO over a two-week observation period. Our results suggest that TO has a considerable anti-inflammatory property through the suppression of inflammatory mediator productions and that it could prove to be useful as a potential anti-inflammatory therapeutic material.