• Annals of Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.342-349
• /
• 2023

Backgrounds/Aims: Liver organoids have emerged as a powerful tool for studying liver biology and disease and for developing new therapies and regenerative medicine approaches. For organoid culture, Matrigel, a type of extracellular matrix, is the most commonly used material. However, Matrigel cannot be used for clinical applications due to the presence of unknown proteins that can cause immune rejection, batch-to-batch variability, and angiogenesis. Methods: To obtain human primary hepatocytes (hPHs), we performed 2 steps collagenase liver perfusion protocol. We treated three small molecules cocktails (A83-01, CHIR99021, and HGF) for reprogramming the hPHs into human chemically derived hepatic progenitors (hCdHs) and used hCdHs to generate liver organoids. Results: In this study, we report the generation of liver organoids in a collagen scaffold using hCdHs. In comparison with adult liver (or primary hepatocyte)-derived organoids with collagen scaffold (hALO_C), hCdH-derived organoids in a collagen scaffold (hCdHO_C) showed a 10-fold increase in organoid generation efficiency with higher expression of liver- or liver progenitor-specific markers. Moreover, we demonstrated that hCdHO_C could differentiate into hepatic organoids (hCdHO_C_DM), indicating the potential of these organoids as a platform for drug screening. Conclusions: Overall, our study highlights the potential of hCdHO_C as a tool for liver research and presents a new approach for generating liver organoids using hCdHs with a collagen scaffold.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.33 no.11
• /
• pp.1506-1512
• /
• 2023

Quantitative analysis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) has been widely used as a diagnostic tool in the food and medical industries. Particularly, the pathogenesis of a few diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is closely related to high ATP concentrations. A bioluminescent D-luciferin/luciferase system, which includes a luciferase (FLuc) from the firefly Photinus pyralis as a key component, is the most commonly used method for the detection and quantification of ATP. Here, instead of isolating FLuc produced in recombinant Escherichia coli, we aimed to develop a whole-cell biocatalyst system that does not require extraction and purification of FLuc. To this end, the gene coding for FLuc was introduced into the genome of probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii using the CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing system. The linear relationship (r² = 0.9561) between ATP levels and bioluminescence generated from the engineered S. boulardii expressing FLuc was observed in vitro. To explore the feasibility of using the engineered S. boulardii expressing FLuc as a whole-cell biosensor to detect inflammation biomarker (i.e., ATP) in the gut, a colitis mouse model was established using dextran sodium sulfate as a colitogenic compound. Our findings demonstrated that the whole-cell biosensor can detect elevated ATP levels during gut inflammation in mice. Therefore, the simple and powerful method developed herein could be applied for non-invasive IBD diagnosis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.63-70
• /
• 2024

Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) are widely used in various sectors, such as transportation (e.g., electric vehicles (EV)) and energy (e.g., energy storage facilities) due to their high energy density, broad operating temperature (-20 ℃ ~ 60 ℃), and high capacities. LIBs are powerful but fragile on external factors, including pressure, physical damage, overheating, and overcharging, that cause thermal runaway causing fires and explosions. During a LIB fire, a large amount of oxygen is generated from the decomposition of ionogenic materials. A water fire extinguisher that helps with cooling and suffocating must be essentially required at the same time. In fact, however, it is difficult to suppress LIB fires in the case of EVs because a LIB is installed with a battery pack housing that interrupts direct extinguishing by water. Thus, this study aims to investigate effective fire extinguishing measurements for LIB fires by using an EV. Relevant documents, including research articles and reports, were reviewed to identify effective ways of LIBs fire extinguishing. A real-scale fire experiment generating thermal runaway was carried out to figure out the combustion characteristics of EVs. This study revealed that the most effective fire extinguishing measurements for LIB fires are applying fire blankets and water tanks. However, there is still a lack of adequate regulation and guidelines for LIB fire extinguishment. Taking this into account, developing functional fire extinguishment measurements and available regulatory instruments is an urgent issue to secure the safety of firefighters and citizens.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.52 no.3
• /
• pp.293-312
• /
• 2024

Researchers are actively investigating the potential for utilizing alternative materials in construction to tackle the environmental and economic challenges linked to traditional concrete-based materials. Nevertheless, conventional laboratory methods for testing the mechanical properties of concrete are both costly and time-consuming. The limitations of traditional models in predicting the tensile strength of concrete composited with geopolymer have created a demand for more advanced models. Fortunately, the increasing availability of data has facilitated the use of machine learning methods, which offer powerful and cost-effective models. This paper aims to explore the potential of several machine learning methods in predicting the tensile strength of geopolymer concrete under different curing conditions. The study utilizes a dataset of 221 tensile strength test results for geopolymer concrete with varying mix ratios and curing conditions. The effectiveness of the machine learning models is evaluated using additional unseen datasets. Based on the values of loss functions and evaluation metrics, the results indicate that most models have the potential to estimate the tensile strength of geopolymer concrete satisfactorily. However, the Takagi Sugeno fuzzy model (TSF) and gene expression programming (GEP) models demonstrate the highest robustness. Both the laboratory tests and machine learning outcomes indicate that geopolymer concrete composed of 50% fly ash and 40% ground granulated blast slag, mixed with 10 mol of NaOH, and cured in an oven at 190°F for 28 days has superior tensile strength.

• Neonatal Medicine
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.49-58
• /
• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between cord blood adiponectin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I and their effect on fetal growth and insulin resistance in mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Methods: Cord blood adiponectin and IGF-I were compared between mothers with GDM (GDM group, N=53) and controls (non-GDM group, N=101). Neonates were classified into three groups of small for gestational age (SGA, N=26), appropriate for gestational age (AGA, N=97), and large for gestational age (LGA, N=31) by birth weight. The association between cord adiponectin and IGF-I levels was evaluated in relation to maternal and neonatal clinical data. Results: Cord adiponectin was lower in the GDM group than in the non-GDM group (P<0.001). There was no significant difference in cord adiponectin among the SGA, AGA, and LGA groups in the GDM group (P=0.228). The cord adiponectin of AGA in the GDM group was significantly lower than that in the non-GDM group (P<0.001). The most powerful predictor affecting cord adiponectin was the result of maternal 75 g oral glucose tolerance test. The cord IGF-I values between the GDM group and the non-GDM group were not different (P=0.834). Neonates with the heavier birth weight had the higher cord IGF-I levels. The most powerful predictor affecting cord IGF-I was birth weight and the next was maternal parity. Conclusion: Both cord blood adiponectin and IGF-I were associated with fetal growth, but IGF-I was a more general and direct factor affecting fetal body size, and adiponectin seemed to have more association with insulin sensitivity than growth.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.25 no.3 s.39
• /
• pp.312-329
• /
• 1992

The purpose of this study is to estimate cesarean section rate in Korea and analyze the socioeconomic variables and health resources which affect regional variation in the rate. Samples were drawn from the record of vaginal and cesarean section deliveries based upon insurance claim bills which have been submitted to the National Federation of Medical Insurance for the first three months, January through March, 1991. The results are obtained as follows : It was found that. cesarean section rate was increasing rapidly up to 23.1% in 1991. Cesarean section per 10 thousand insured people was 4.8 and the number of cesarean section per 10 thousand insured eligible($15{\sim}49$ years old) female was 7.6. The fee for normal delivery was 109,489 won and that for cesarean section was 390,024 won. The average days of hospitalization in normal delivery was 2.3 days, and those in cesarean section was 7.6 days. On the average cesarean section has a longer of stay as much as by 4.3 days and cost 3.6 times more than normal deliveries. Cesarean section rates vary among medical facilities 19.8% at clinics 37.6% in small-scale hospitals, and 29.1% in general hospitals. The regional variation of cesarean section rates was also fairly prominent. The South Cheju Gun has the highest rate of cesarean section, 56.2%. Meanwhile no cesarean section cases has been reported in Sunchang Gun during the period of this study. The variation is noted among provinces. The rate for Cheju province has been 3.4 times higher than that for Chunnam. The number of cesarean section per 10 thousand insured people vary greatly among regions, too. This study has found that there exists significant regional variations among various geographic units in terms of average length of stay, average cost, number of obsretricians and number of beds. Multiple regression analysis was done to identify factors explaining the regional variance of various cesarean section rates : In the urban areas, no significant explaining variables were noted except the number of beds for the dependent variable of cesarean section cases per 10 thousand insured eligible females. The smaller the number of bed, the more cases of cesarean section was noted for an urban area. The is mostly because the rate of cesarean section is higher in medium-size hospitals than in large general hospitals. In the rural areas, the factor of education has been found significant for all three deplendent variables. The higher the educational level, the rate of cesarean section is most likely to rise. An income variable measured by the amount of monthly insurance contribution has been identified a powerful predictor in explaining the valiance of cesarean section rates. The same has been noted for the number of obstetricians. Similar findings are observed for the country as a whole. The income level has veen found as the most powerful explaining factor in the regional variance of cesarean section rates. In general the rate is higher in the urban areas, and lower in the area with more small hospitals. As this is the initial attempt to identify the factors relevant to the regional difference in the rates of cesarean section, more elaborated study is urgently required.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.17 no.6
• /
• pp.71-80
• /
• 2017

The standards for achievement levels for building blocks in elementary geometry class is to enhance spatial cognitive ability through practices describing shape patterns of building blocks observed from different directions. However, most of building block in the textbook is described from only one perspective. Even worse, some examples in the textbook are almost impossible to observe in the real world. Contrary to this, simulated views by Wings3D has shown that each box may look quite differently from different angles let alone the size of each box. Using Wings3D, it is also very easy to build different types of building blocks with various levels of difficulty in the virtual space. Based on these results, in this study, 3D visualization SW is suggested as a potential pedagogical tool for the elementary geometry class to help kids perceive objects in space more precisely. We have shown that 3D visualization SW such as Wings3D could be a powerful, compact 3D SW for most of subjects which are covered in elementary geometry education. Wings3D has another advantage of economic open source SW fully compatible with school PCs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
• /
• 2005.09a
• /
• pp.267-271
• /
• 2005

The goal of data mining is to extract new and useful knowledge from large scale datasets. As the amount of available data grows explosively, it became vitally important to develop faster data mining algorithms for various types of data. Recently, an interest in developing data mining algorithms that operate on graphs has been increased. Especially, mining frequent patterns from structured data such as graphs has been concerned by many research groups. A graph is a highly adaptable representation scheme that used in many domains including chemistry, bioinformatics and physics. For example, the chemical structure of a given substance can be modelled by an undirected labelled graph in which each node corresponds to an atom and each edge corresponds to a chemical bond between atoms. Internet can also be modelled as a directed graph in which each node corresponds to an web site and each edge corresponds to a hypertext link between web sites. Notably in bioinformatics area, various kinds of newly discovered data such as gene regulation networks or protein interaction networks could be modelled as graphs. There have been a number of attempts to find useful knowledge from these graph structured data. One of the most powerful analysis tool for graph structured data is frequent subgraph analysis. Recurring patterns in graph data can provide incomparable insights into that graph data. However, to find recurring subgraphs is extremely expensive in computational side. At the core of the problem, there are two computationally challenging problems. 1) Subgraph isomorphism and 2) Enumeration of subgraphs. Problems related to the former are subgraph isomorphism problem (Is graph A contains graph B?) and graph isomorphism problem(Are two graphs A and B the same or not?). Even these simplified versions of the subgraph mining problem are known to be NP-complete or Polymorphism-complete and no polynomial time algorithm has been existed so far. The later is also a difficult problem. We should generate all of 2$^n$ subgraphs if there is no constraint where n is the number of vertices of the input graph. In order to find frequent subgraphs from larger graph database, it is essential to give appropriate constraint to the subgraphs to find. Most of the current approaches are focus on the frequencies of a subgraph: the higher the frequency of a graph is, the more attentions should be given to that graph. Recently, several algorithms which use level by level approaches to find frequent subgraphs have been developed. Some of the recently emerging applications suggest that other constraints such as connectivity also could be useful in mining subgraphs : more strongly connected parts of a graph are more informative. If we restrict the set of subgraphs to mine to more strongly connected parts, its computational complexity could be decreased significantly. In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm to mine frequent subgraphs that are more strongly connected. Experimental study shows that the algorithm is scaling to larger graphs which have more than ten thousand vertices.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.154-160
• /
• 2001

Purpose : This study, as the first year project of setting up a community based management system, was attempted for the cancer patients and their family to improve their quality of life; investigating and managing the cancer patients, educating volunteers and connecting the patients with the volunteers were performed. Method and result : The education of managing cancer patients for the volunteers was done once in lune for 2 days to the 80 volunteers. Questions about education effect, volunteer motivation and so on were made up. The survey showed, generally, education satisfaction level was high and a longer education and an intensive course were needed and was suggested that organizing a volunteer community be needed for the continuous further education and systematic management. As the result, after the public health center and volunteers deliberated, a volunteer community consisting of 4 teams, 28 members was organized, launched in Oct. and operated for the cancer patients and their family. For investigating and enrolling the patients, advertising on a local information paper, recommending of local doctors, publicizing by educating the heads of a subdivision of the city, the heads of a neighborhood association and the people in charge of the related local communities such as women's society, and surveying the community by volunteers were performed and the total, 41 patients were registered. Management of cancer patients was carried out by volunteers in a community and in a nursing school. A regional volunteers' community is composed of 23 members and they have worked 87 times, that is 3.8 times per capita on an average. The content of duties is attending the education (41.1%) the most. A volunteers' community of nursing students composed of 12 members have worked 135 times, that is 11.3 times per capita on an average. The content of duties - consulting with patients and home visiting (37.8 %) were the most and survey for investigating the cancer patients was the second. Conclusion : This study has the meaning that this is the guiding attempt in building a community based management system, and especially the achievement of this study is that a regional society organized a volunteer community for the cancer patients by itself and went into action for the cancer patients and their family. Furthermore, to activate this volunteering, it is necessary to keep managing volunteers and running continuing education or the intensive course of the volunteers. Indeed we should let the patients have good impression on this program through publicity and education for the residents to keep track of more cancer patients. For that, systematic and powerful cooperation of a self-administrative organization is required.

• Women's Health Nursing
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.20-33
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study is to afford basic data for planning a program to strategically prevent adolescent sexual violence by clarifying the concept of sexual violence in adolescence and investigating factors influencing the adolescent attitudes towards sexual violence. Subjects of the study were 288 adolescents between the ages of 14 to 21, living in K city in Chungnam Province. The data was collected for this study between May 30 and June 13, 2001. For this study, the following materials were used as instruments: the types of attitudes toward sexual violence developed by Nam, S. Y.(2000), the antisocial personality by Min, B. K., Choi, S. J., & Lee, G. H.(1978), the self-esteem developed by Rosenberg(1965) and interpreted by Jeon, B. J.(1974), the family support developed by Cobb(1976), the stereotyped sex role and the attitude on sexuality by Kim, E. J.(1997). The data was analyzed, using SPSS 7.5 for Windows Program, descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and discriminant analysis. The results of this study were as follows: 1. Adolescents of the first type, ones blaming social morals, amounted to 34.7%(100 subjects), the second type, ones blaming the victims, amounted to 22.3%(64 subjects), the third type, ones claiming reform of consciousness, amounted to 25.3%(73 subjects), and the fourth type, ones coping actively, amounted to 17.7%(51 subjects). 2. Attitudes toward sexual violence were influenced a great deal by the sex of the subject. 3. The study revealed that various types of the attitudes toward sexual violence was significantly different from one another, related to antisocial personality(F=2.80, P=.04). Especially the first type and the third type were most different from each other. The latter showed the antisocial personality strongly, compared with the former. 4. Discriminant analysis revealed that the most powerful predictors of attitudes toward sexual violence were the sex of the subject and whether or not they had an antisocial personality. 5. The degree of possibility of identifying a risk group of adolescents was 45.9% and the possibility of identifying a non-risk group was 73.3%. The hit ratio was 67.8%. In conclusion, the results of the study lead us to understand the type of adolescent attitudes toward sexual violence. The results will be useful to furnish a guideline for nursing intervention and education programs to prevent sexual violence in adolescence.