• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2013

Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is a member of serine protease inhibitor family, which regulates the activity of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). In CNS, tPA/PAI-1 activity is involved in the regulation of a variety of cellular processes such as neuronal development, synaptic plasticity and cell survival. To gain a more insights into the regulatory mechanism modulating tPA/PAI-1 activity in brain, we investigated the effects of proteasome inhibitors on tPA/PAI-1 expression and activity in rat primary astrocytes, the major cell type expressing both tPA and PAI-1. We found that submicromolar concentration of MG132, a cell permeable peptide-aldehyde inhibitor of ubiquitin proteasome pathway selectively upregulates PAI-1 expression. Upregulation of PAI-1 mRNA as well as increased PAI-1 promoter reporter activity suggested that MG132 transcriptionally increased PAI-1 expression. The induction of PAI-1 downregulated tPA activity in rat primary astrocytes. Another proteasome inhibitor lactacystin similarly increased the expression of PAI-1 in rat primary astrocytes. MG132 activated MAPK pathways as well as PI3K/Akt pathways. Inhibitors of these signaling pathways reduced MG132-mediated upregulation of PAI-1 in varying degrees and most prominent effects were observed with SB203580, a p38 MAPK pathway inhibitor. The regulation of tPA/PAI-1 activity by proteasome inhibitor in rat primary astrocytes may underlie the observed CNS effects of MG132 such as neuroprotection.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.41-48
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• 2007

Zevo-valent iron (ZVI) has been widely used in permeable reactive barriers for reducing organic contaminants, such as trichloroethylene (TCE). The rapid reaction time, however, leads to decrease in reactivity and availability of ZVI. Shewanella algae BrY, a strain of dissimilatory iron reducing bacteria, can reduce the oxidized Fe (III) to Fe (II) and reduced Fe (II) can be reused to reduce the contaminant. The effect of Shewanella algae BrY on the reduction of the oxidized ZVI column and further TCE removal in the contaminated groundwater were studied at different flow rates and TCE input concentrations in this study. High input concentration of TCE and flow rate increase the amount of input contaminant and make to lower the effect of reduction by Shewanella algae BrY. Specially, the fast flow rate inhibits the direct contact and implantation on the surface of iron. The reduction of oxidized iron reactive barrier by Shewanella algae BrY can decrease the decreation of duration of PRBs by the precipitation of oxidized iron produced by dechlorination of TCE.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.39-49
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• 2011

The porous pavement system is widely considered very effective in urban street because of its various benefits on safety and environment, but the pavement thickness design system has not been established yet. In porous pavement system. rainwater penetrates to the subgrade through porous pavements layers. Porous pavements are expected to reduce or alleviate the problems caused by impermeable pavement layer such as flood damage due to heavy rain in the city, drainage load, disorder in ecosystem, and heat island. However, its structural design methods in traffic roads has not been made mainly because of not being able to consider adequately the effect of rainwater on subgrade strength. In this study, structural design method of porous pavements is suggested after considering the subgrade weakness due to rainwater and numerical mechanical analysis. It is noted that elastic modulus of subgrade is reduced by 20% as subgrade moisture content is increased by 2% at optimum moisture content in the literature review. As a result of both finite element analysis and strength loss of subgrade by the existing design method, it is necessary to increase subbase thickness about 30cm in porous pavements compared with the existing traffic road pavement system. It is similar to premium thickness of structural design of porous pavements in Japan.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.651-658
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• 2012

This paper concentrates on the evaluation of microcracks in thermal damaged concrete on the basis of the nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. Since concrete structure exposed to high temperature accompanies the development of microcracks due to the physical and chemical changes from temperature and exposed time, the adoption of nonlinear approach is required. Instead of using the conventional ultrasonic nondestructive methods which have the limitation in evaluating excessive microcracks, accordingly, a nonlinear ultrasonic modulation method which shows better sensitivity in quantifying microcracks is introduced. Upon the analysis for the modulation of ultrasonic wave and low frequency impact to measure the nonlinearity parameter, which can be used as an indicator of thermal damage, the verification processes for the introduced technique are followed: SEM investigation and permeable pore space test are performed to characterize thermally induced microcracks in concrete, and ultrasonic pulse velocity tests are performed to confirm the outstanding sensitivity of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. In advance, compressive strength of thermal damaged concrete is measured to represent the effect of microcracks on performance degradation. Correlation studies between experimental data and measured data show that nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique can effectively be used to quantify thermally induced microcracks, and to estimate the compressive strength of thermally damaged concrete.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.809-838
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• 2013

Innovation is the development of new customers value through solutions that meet new needs, inarticulate needs, or old customer and market needs in value adding new ways. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Therefore, the utilization of patents is the most important of the three aspects (creation, protection and utilization) in the patent system for getting to actual innovation. In order to increase the patent use, the rates of the applied patents to a real industrial process and the bargain and license of patent rights should be promoted. For promoting technological innovation substantially, there is necessary to escape from dichotomy of weakening or enhancing patent protection in the discussion on the changes of patent system for "Adequate patent guarantees". Furthermore, the legal and institutional improvements to enable the use of patent should be discussed together. Recently, open innovation is a new paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology" or "Innovating with partners by sharing risk and sharing reward." The boundaries between a firm and its environment have become more permeable; innovations can easily transfer inward and outward. The central idea behind open innovation is that in a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but should instead buy or license processes or inventions (i.e. patents) from other companies. In addition, internal inventions not being used in a firm's business should be taken outside the company. In the era of open innovation, more flexible patent use strategy is essential. It is important that improvements for the legal system in order that patented technology can be applied for products and processes in a real industrial between outside and inside of the firms.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.147-155
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• 2020

This paper presents a study on the development of a fire extinguishing agent and extinguishing system for an energy storage system (ESS) fire. The fire extinguishing agent designed to extinguish an ESS fire is a highly permeable fire extinguisher that reduces the surface tension and viscosity while bringing about cooling action. This is the main extinguishing effect of this type of wetting agent, which displays the characteristics of fire extinguishing agents used for penetrating the battery cells inside the ESS module. For the fire extinguishing system, a local application system was designed to suppress fire on a rack-by-rack basis. A 360° rotating nozzle was inserted into the rear hall of the ESS module, and general nozzles were installed in the rack to maximize the fire extinguishing effect. The fire extinguishing agent was strongly discharged by virtue of the gas release pressure. Experiments on fire suppression performance with ESS module 1 unit and module 3 units showed that all visible flames were extinguished in 8 s and 9 s, respectively, by the fire extinguishing agent. In addition, based on confirming reignition for 600 s after the fire extinguishing agent was exhausted, it was confirmed that the ESS fire was completely extinguished without reignition in all fire suppression performance experiments.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.342-349
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• 2016

Andong belongs to the Nakdong River Basin, Nakdong River is flowing through the city, including Andong dam and Imha dam. The runoff due to provincial transfer and impervious area has been increasing by urbanization increases and nonpoint source loads. In this study, we evaluate the runoff and nonpoint pollution loads in accordance with the development targeted at selected urban water cycle leading to Andong city. Andong city leading to the water cycle plan to evaluate the directly runoff and BOD, T-N and T-P nonpoint pollutant loads using the CN into account the temporal and spatial changes. Evaluation, direct runoff per year is 10.41 % if the green roof and a water permeable pavement replacement, water cycle parks and streets compositions, City impermeable layer improvements to be business including four kinds of scenario is applied to both the development and the BOD non-point pollutant loads 20.56%, T-N 9.55% and T-P pollution and nonpoint loads was investigated to be reduced 14.29%. Four kinds of low lapse rate of the development scenario of the highest thing urban impervious surface was investigated by improving business development prior year annual direct runoff is 6.25 %, BOD nonpoint pollution loads are 11.84%, T-N nonpoint pollution loads are 4.46 % and T-P was investigated by reducing pollutant loads to be 10.20%.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.71-87
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• 2013

Companies as well as the Korean government show growing attention to the Smart Work which is enabled by the ongoing development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Smart Work can be regarded as an extended version of telecommuting or distance work and defined as "working efficiently and conveniently regardless of time and place utilizing ICTs." Smart Work currently puts its emphasis on the work and life balance by changing the ways of working. Despite its emphasis on work and life balance, it is expected the boundaries between work and nonwork would blur, work and nonwork boundaries may become more permeable, and role conflicts would occur more times than before. To find ways to enhance work and life balance while escaping from expected conflicts in the context of Smart Work, we investigate the work and nonwork boundary strengths and the factors affecting them. In the course, we consider asymmetries between the work and nonwork boundary strengths and bidirectional nature of work and nonwork permeability. We develop two research models having work and nonwork boundary strengths as respective dependent variables. We empirically found that work role identification and nonwork-to-work permeability had influences on the boundary strength at work and that work-to-nonwork permeability affected the boundary strength at nonwork. However, nonwork role identification did not show any significant influence on the boundary strength at nonwork.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.87-97
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• 2000

The effects of environmental conditions, initial dissolved oxygen concentrations, pH, and the presence of electron carrier vitamin $B_{12}$, on the reduction rate of Tn by $Fe^0$ was quantitatively analyzed using a batch reactor In all experiments, TNT reduction was best described with a first order reaction and the reduction rate decreased with the increase in the initial DO concentration. However, the specific reaction rate did not decrease linearly with the increase in the initial DO concentration. In the presence of HEPES buffer 0.2 and 2.0 mM(pH 5.7$\pm$0.2), the specific reaction rate increased more than 5.8 times, which showed reduction rate is rather significantly influenced by the pH of the solution. To test the possibility of reaction rate enhancement, well-known electron carrier(or mediator) , vitamin $B_{12}$, has augmented besides $Fe^0$. In the presence of 8.0 $mu\textrm{g}$/L of vitamin $B_{12}$, the specific reaction rate increased as much as 14.6 times. The results indicate that the addition of trace amount of vitamin $B_{12}$ can be a promising rate controlling option for the removal of organics using a $Fe^0$ filled permeable reactive barrier.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.343-351
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• 2001

This study was undertaken to investigate the mechanism of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and nitric oxide (NO) as a regulator of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation. VSMC was primarily cultured from rat aorta and confirmed by the immunocytochemistry with anti-smooth muscle myosin antibody. The number of viable VSMCs were counted, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity was measured to assess the degree of cell death. Concentrations of nitrite in the culture medium were measured as an indicator of NO production. LPS was introduced into the medium to induce the inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in VSMC, and Western blot for iNOS protein and RT-PCR for iNOS mRNA were performed to confirm the presence of iNOS. Inhibitors of iNOS and soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC), sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and L-arginine were employed to observe the action of LPS on the iNOS-NO-cGMP signalling pathway. LPS and SNP decreased number of VSMCs and increased the nitrite concentration in the culture medium, but there was no significant change in LDH activity. A cell permeable cGMP derivative, 8-Bromo-cGMP, decreased the number of VSMCs with no significant change in LDH activity. L-arginine, an NO substrate, alone tended to reduce cell count without affecting nitrite concentration or LDH level. Aminoguanidine, an iNOS specific inhibitor, inhibited LPS-induced reduction of cell numbers and reduced the nitrite concentration in the culture medium. LY 83583, a guanylate cyclase inhibitor, suppressed the inhibitory actions of LPS and SNP on VSMC proliferation. LPS increased amounts of iNOS protein and iNOS mRNA in a concentration-dependent manner. These results suggest that LPS inhibits the VSMC proliferation via production of NO by inducing iNOS gene expression. The cGMP which is produced by subsequent activation of guanylate cyclase would be a major mediator in the inhibitory action of iNOS-NO signalling on VSMC proliferation.