• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.463-472
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• 2015

Adrenomedullin (AM) is a peptide expressed in all body tissues, and its related receptors are increased in liver fibrosis. In this study, we evaluated the effect of AM deficiency on liver fibrogenesis induced by $CCl_4$ using AM heterozygous (HT) mice. The animals received a single injection of $CCl_4$ or olive oil for the acute experiment, and received $CCl_4$ or olive oil three times a week for 6 weeks for the chronic experiment. Fibrosis was accessed using histopathological analysis and the western blot. The AM HT mice showed mild pericentrilobular degeneration when compared to the AM wild type (WT) mice. In the acute experiment, there was no significant difference between the AM WT and AM HT mice. However, in the chronic experiment, the $CCl_4$-treated AM HT mice showed more severe liver fibrosis than that of the CCl₄-treated AM WT mice. The AST and ALT levels of the AM HT $CCl_4$ group were higher than those of the AM WT CCl₄ group. Additionally, the collagen deposition, $\alpha$- SMA protein and TGF-$\beta$ protein were increased in the AM HT $CCl_4$ group when compared to the AM WT $CCl_4$ group. The AM HT mice also exhibited severe lipid peroxidation through the GSH decrement. Taken together, our data suggest that AM deficiency increases the susceptibility to liver fibrosis induced by $CCl_4$, indicating a novel therapeutic target for patients with liver fibrosis.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.327-333
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• 2014

A method for analysis of five artificial sweetners (sodium saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose, cyclamate) in beverage samples was developed using high-performance liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS/MS). The method uses a single-step dilution for sample preperation. Seperation was achieved on a $C_{18}$ column ($2.1{\times}150mm$, $3.5{\mu}m$) with A- 2% methanol (1 mM ammonium acetate), B-95% methanol (1 mM ammonium acetate) as mobile phase with gradient mode. The quantitation of target compounds was performed by external calibration in selected reaction monitorning (SRM) mode. The coefficient of determination of calibration curve for sodium saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose and cyclamate were 0.9957, 0.9991, 0.9943, 0.9982 and 0.9948, respectively. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantitation (LOQs) were in the range of 0.001~0.022 mg/L and 0.004~0.073 mg/L, repectively. Recoveries for beverage samples were in the range of 92.76~113.50% with RSD < 10.91%. The method has applied to the determination of the five sweetners in 102 beverage samples. Three artificial sweetners-aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose were detected from 42 samples. Sodium saccharin and cyclamate were not detected in all samples.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.390-398
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• 2021

In this study, the toxicity of chlorothalonil was investigated using survival rate and population growth rate of a marine rotifer, Brachionus plicatilis, typically used in live food in marine aquaculture systems. The survival rate of B. plicatilis was determined after 24 h of exposure to chlorothalonil (0.010-0.156 mg L^-1). Population growth rate of B. plicatilis was calculated after 72 h of exposure to chlorothalonil (0.078-1.250 mg L^-1). The survival rate and population growth rate of B. plicatilis exposed to chlorothalonil in single-dose toxicity assessment showed concentration-dependent reductions. Survival rates of B. plicatilis exposed to chlorothalonil had the following values: NOEC, 0.020mg L^-1; LOEC, 0.039 mg L^-1; and EC₅₀, 0.057 mg L^-1. Population growth rate of B. plicatilis exposed to chlorothalonil had the following values: NOEC, 0.156 mg L^-1; LOEC, 0.313 mg L^-1; and EC₅₀, 0.506 mg L^-1. When the residual concentration of chlorothalonil in the marine coastal area was more than 0.039 mg L^-1, it had a toxic effect on B. plicatilis, a zooplankton. This paper provides toxicity values that can be used as baseline data for organizing environmental standards of chlorothalonil. It also provides insight into toxic effects of chlorothalonil on other non-target organisms.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.398-411
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• 2021

Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate food and nutrition information utilization practices of adults aged between 20 and 30 years to provide the basic data for developing customized content. Methods: Statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS program (ver. 24.0) for the 𝛘²-test, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and Duncan's multiple range test. Results: Of the 570 subjects surveyed, 45.4% were men, 54.6% were women, 66.3% were in their 20s, 33.7% were in their 30s, 41.4% were single-person households, and 58.6% lived with their families. On average, 14.2% of televisions (TVs), 26.0% of personal computers (PCs), and 63.7% of smartphones were used for more than three hours per day. 30.9% of respondents searched for food and nutrition information more than once a week. 70.0% of the respondents had then applied the information in real life and 54.7% of the respondents said they would share information with others. Information retrieval rate was in the order of 'restaurant (64.8%)', 'diet (57.5%)', and 'food recipes (55.7%)'. Overall satisfaction with food and nutrition information averaged 3.33 on a five-point scale. Satisfaction score was in the order of 'enough description and easy to understand (3.43)', 'matching title and content (3.35)', and 'providing new and novel information (3.22)'. Satisfaction scores were significantly higher in the group that searched for information (p < 0.001), the group that used the retrieved information in real life (p < 0.001), and the group that conveyed this information to others (p < 0.001). Conclusion: To improve information user satisfaction, it is necessary to provide customized information that fits the characteristics of information users. For this purpose, it is necessary to continuously conduct surveys and satisfaction evaluations for each target group.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.141-155
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• 2024

Background: This study aimed to identified the relationship between the risk of obstructive sleep apnea, subjective health, and health-related quality of life among the middle-aged and elderly population in Korea. Methods: Adults aged 40 or older were extracted from the total 22,559 respondents to the 2019-2020 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey VIII, and secondary analysis was conducted on a total of 6,659 middle-aged and elderly people with no missing values. Logistic regression analysis and multiple regression analysis were conducted to examine the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea risk factors and subjective health as well as quality of life. Results: The subjective health status decline in the high-risk group compared to the non-risk group for obstructive sleep apnea was statistically significantly higher, with an odds ratio of 1.84 (p<0.001). The health-related quality of life was also statistically significantly lower by 0.02 points (β, -0.02; p<0.001). As a result of subgroup analysis on specific variables, the association between the risk of obstructive sleep apnea and subjective health and health-related quality of life was statistically significant depending on gender, sleep time, presence of depression, household income, and number of household members. Based on the obstructive sleep apnea risk group, women had a higher correlation with low subjective health and lower health-related quality of life scores than men. Sleeping time of more than 8 hours or less than 6 hours was more associated with low subjective health and lower health-related quality of life score than sleeping time of 6-8 hours. Patients with depression were more likely to have low subjective health than those without depression. The lower the household income level and the smaller the number of household members, the higher the association with low subjective health and the lower the health-related quality of life score. Conclusion: It is essential to recognize that the risk of obstructive sleep apnea not only directly affects sleep disorders but also impacts individuals' subjective health and quality of life. Consequently, social support and education should be provided to raise awareness of this issue. Particularly, programs for preventing and managing obstructive sleep apnea should target vulnerable groups such as women, individuals in single-person households, low household income, and those with depression, aiming to improve their subjective health and quality of life.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.38-49
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• 2015

This study aims to contemplated spatial recognition in Soswaewon Garden through garden visitors poetry. It was content analysis in poetry and extract frequency from words based on relationship of author. The results were as follows. First, relationship of authors who wrote Soswaewon Garden poetry was formed in companionship. In the Yang, San-Bo(梁山甫), poetry was written by Song, Soon(宋純), Kim, Un-Geo(金彦据) and Kim, In-Hu(金麟厚) as the central figure. Especially Kim, In-Hu was playing an important role in Soswaewon Garden poetry. He was wrote many of poetry and keep friends with Yang, Ja-Jeong(梁子渟) too. In the Yang, Ja-Jung, relationship of previous generation was sustained. In addition, Ko, Gyeong-Myeong(高敬命) and Kim, Seong-Won and Jeong, Chul(鄭澈) is more closely related than others. Because blood relationship by marriage. In the Yang, Jin-Tae(梁晋泰), He formed a relationship with a celebrity and attend to international activity. Since then Yang, Jin-Tae periord, Yang, Gyeong-Ji(梁敬之) and Yang, Chae-Ji(梁采之) formed relationship of previous generation was sustained. And surrounding people was written poetry as hold a banquet. Second, plant and ornament is a popular object for writing poetry. Bamboo grove and Fine tree with a high frequency of plant element in poetry. Bamboo grove is a typical species of trees in Soswaewon Garden. It was enclosed the Soswaewon Garden. Fine tree was often used target of poetry as a single tree. Meanwhile, ornament of the wall has been used most frequently. Descendants wrote a poem to see it because Kim, In-Hu's poetry was left. This phenomenon is involves respect for the ancient sages with high frequency. In addition, behavior of viewing the landscape was mainly appeared. Third, spatial recognition of Soswaewon Garden can be divided into landscape cognition, behavior cognition and emotional cognition. In a aspect of landscape cognition, early Soswaewon Garden was recognized as a pavilion. That was used garden name to 'Soswaewon Garden' since Yang, Ja-Jung's period. That is to say, Soswaewon Garden expanded from pavilion area surrounded by trees into the whole appearance is equipped garden area. Behavior cognition was consisting drink and enjoys a landscape. In the Yang, San-Bo, authors enjoyed drinking and viewing a landscape besides walking, writing poetry, viewing the moon. But after Yang, San-Bo's period other than drinking and enjoy a landscape has appeared a low frequency. These results were changed from internal place to blood relationship into external place to companionship. In the Yang, San-Bo's emotional cognition was sorrow and yearning about leave to Soswaewon Garden with an idly atmosphere. Pleasant emotion was sustained all generation. And emotion of respect for the ancient sages was appeared since Yang, Cheon-un.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 2012

Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-248
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• 2010

This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.