• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.155-162
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• 2013

Objective: Stress is known to be an inhibitor of the reproductive hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. However, the neural and molecular connections between stress and reproduction are not yet understood. It is well established that in both humans and rodents, kisspeptin (encoded by the kiss1 gene) is a strong stimulator of the HPG axis. In the present study we hypothesized that endocannabinoids, an important neuromodulatory system in the brain, can act on the HPG axis at the level of kiss1 expression to inhibit reproductive function under stress. Methods: Adult male Wistar rats were unilaterally implanted with an intracerebroventricular cannula. Afterwards, the animals were exposed to immobilization stress, with or without the presence of the cannabinoid CB1 receptor antagonist AM251 (1 ${\mu}g/rat$). Blood samples were collected through a retro-orbital plexus puncture before and after stress. Five hours after the stress, brain tissue was collected for reverse transcriptase-quantitative polymerase chain reaction measurements of kiss1 mRNA. Results: Immobilization stress (1 hour) resulted in a decrease in the serum luteinizing hormone concentration. Additionally, kiss1 gene expression was decreased in key hypothalamic nuclei that regulate gonadotrophin secretion, the medial preoptic area (mPOA), and to some extent the arcuate nucleus (ARC). A single central administration of AM251 was effective in blocking these inhibitory responses. Conclusion: These findings suggest that endocannabinoids mediate, at least in part, immobilization stress-induced inhibition of the reproductive system. Our data suggest that the connection between immobilization stress and the HPG axis is kiss1 expression in the mPOA rather than the ARC.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.93-94
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• 2007

An essential step for SERGI is to show the TRANSFORMER PROTECTOR (TP) efficacy for all transformers and all types of rupture of insulation. Its research program philosophy is thus to maintain a strong connection between experiments and the theoretical developments. Up to now, two TP test campaigns have been performed, both under the worst conditions by creating low impedance faults leading to electrical arcs inside the transformer tank dielectric oil. In 2002, Electricite de France performed 28 TP tests. Then, in 2004, a second campaign of 34 TP tests was carried out by CEPEL, the Brazilian independent High Voltage Laboratory. For the 62 tests, each transformer was equipped with the TP, which reacts directly to the moving dynamic pressure peak, shock wave, caused by the low impedance fault. When an electrical arc occurs, only one pressure peak is generated. The initial energy transfer is almost instantaneous, and so is the phase change. Because of the oil inertia, the gas is very quickly pressurised. As it is more difficult to vaporise a liquid than to crack oil-vapour into smaller molecules, the arc location would mainly remain in the gaseous phase after and less gas will be produced. As a result, when comparing tests for which pressure peaks are respectively equal to 8 bar (116 psi) and 8.8 bar (127 psi), the corresponding arc energies vary by an order 10 of magnitude (0.1 MJ and 1 MJ respectively). The correlation of the results obtained between arc energy and dynamic pressure demonstrates that the arc energy is not the key parameter during transformer tank explosion, which is in opposition with the common electrical engineers belief.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.85-92
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• 2013

IL-23 and IL-12 are structurally similar and critical for the generation of efficient cellular immune responses. Toxoplasma gondii induces a strong cell-mediated immune response. However, little is known about IL-23 secretion profiles in T. gondii-infected immune cells in connection with IL-12. We compared the patterns of IL-23 and IL-12 production by THP-1 human monocytic cells in response to stimulation with live or heat-killed T. gondii tachyzoites, or with equivalent quantities of either T. gondii excretory/secretory proteins (ESP) or soluble tachyzoite antigen (STAg). IL-23 and IL-12 were significantly increased from 6 hr after stimulation with T. gondii antigens, and their secretions were increased with parasite dose-dependent manner. IL-23 concentrations were significantly higher than those of IL-12 at the same multiplicity of infection. IL-23 secretion induced by live parasites was significantly higher than that by heat-killed parasites, ESP, or STAg, whereas IL-12 secretion by live parasite was similar to those of ESP or STAg. However, the lowest levels of both cytokines were at stimulation with heat-killed parasites. These data indicate that IL-23 secretion patterns by stimulation with various kinds of T. gondii antigens at THP-1 monocytic cells are similar to those of IL-12, even though the levels of IL-23 induction were significantly higher than those of IL-12. The detailed kinetics induced by each T. gondii antigen were different from each other.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.495-503
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• 2015

This study attempts to reveal that the connection between consumers' self enhancement and consumer-brand relationship can be formed from brand experiences not only through a direct use of products or brands but also through companies' marketing activities including advertising or promotion, in that consumers' sensual, affective, cognitive, and behavioral response to brands are included in brand experiences. After experiencing the Samsung Galaxy S brand with manipulated stimulus, 248 respondents' positive emotion and self-enhancement were increased. Also the positive emotion induced by brand experience increase self-enhancement. This study also shows that brand experience and self-enhancement can significantly affect consumer-brand relationship which in turn affects brand loyalty such as satisfaction, recommendation intention, and repurchase intention. Experiencing strong, favorable, and attractive brand personalities may help consumers to increase positive emotions with self-enhancement and help companies to have brand loyalty through consumer-brand relationship.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.189-202
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• 2016

This work emphasized optimum production of biodiesel using non-edible Prunus armeniaca (Bitter Apricot) oil via transesterification collected from the high altitude areas of Himachal Pradesh, India. In this study the author produced biodiesel through the process of transesterification by using an alkali catalyst with alcohol (methanol and ethanol), under the varying molar ratio (1:6, 1:9, 1:12), variable catalyst percentage (1% and 2%) and temperature ($70^{\circ}C$, $75^{\circ}C$, $80^{\circ}C$, $85^{\circ}C$). Furthermore, a few strong base catalysts were used that includes sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, sodium metal and freshly prepared sodium methoxide. After screening the catalyst, response surface methodology (RSM) in connection with the central composite design (CCD) was used to statistically evaluate and optimize the biodiesel production operation using NaOH as catalyst. It was found that the production of biodiesel achieved an optimum level biodiesel yield with 97.30% FAME conversion under the following reaction conditions: 1) Methanol/oil molar ratio: 1:6, 2) Reaction time: 3h, 3) Catalyst amount: NaOH 2 wt. %, and 4) Reaction temperature: $85^{\circ}C$. The experimental results showed that the optimum production and conversion of biodiesel through the process of transesterification could be achieved under an optimal set of reaction conditions. The biodiesel obtained showed appropriate fuel properties as specified in ASTM, BIS and En- standards.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.12 no.2 s.25
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• pp.151-155
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• 2006

In these days, welding is the most commonly used metallic connection technology and also is the fundamental production technology of the modem industrial, which is used in various areas of the industrial fields, such as shipbuilding, automobiles, airplanes and plant facilities. However welding process produces strong light, electric currents, and fume gases etc., and the welding automation is not so easy compared to the other works of manufacturing industries which produce the standardized products in large quantities. So it is difficult to weld and detect the all kinds of seams automatically by a specific sensor. In this paper the sensor applying strain gauges is used to detect the seams of triangular wave form. With the auto carriage having the sensor we proposed the experiment to weld and track the seam automatically.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.375-387
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• 2018

This paper presents a review on progressive collapse mechanism of steel framed buildings exposed to fire. The influence of load ratios, strength of structural members (beam, column, slab, connection), fire scenarios, bracing systems, fire protections on the collapse mode and collapse time of structures is comprehensively reviewed. It is found that the key influencing factors include load ratio, fire scenario, bracing layout and fire protection. The application of strong beams, high load ratios, multi-compartment fires will lead to global downward collapse which is undesirable. The catenary action in beams and tensile membrane action in slabs contribute to the enhancement of structural collapse resistance, leading to a ductile collapse mechanism. It is recommended to increase the reinforcement ratio in the sagging and hogging region of slabs to not only enhance the tensile membrane action in the slab, but to prevent the failure of beam-to-column connections. It is also found that a frame may collapse in the cooling phase of compartment fires or under travelling fires. This is because that the steel members may experience maximum temperatures and maximum displacements under these two fire scenarios. An edge bay fire is more prone to induce the collapse of structures than a central bay fire. The progressive collapse of buildings can be effectively prevented by using bracing systems and fire protections. A combination of horizontal and vertical bracing systems as well as increasing the strength and stiffness of bracing members is recommended to enhance the collapse resistance. A protected frame dose not collapse immediately after the local failure but experiences a relatively long withstanding period of at least 60 mins. It is suggested to use three-dimensional models for accurate predictions of whether, when and how a structure collapses under various fire scenarios.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2019

The 5G network is a next-generation converged network that combines various ICT technologies to realize the need for high speed, hyper connection and ultra low delay, and various efforts have been made to address the security vulnerabilities of the previous generation mobile networks. However, the standards released so far still have potential security vulnerabilities, such as USIM deception and replication attack, message re-transmission attack, and race-condition attack. In order to solve these security problems, this paper proposes a new 5G-AKA protocol with PUF technology, which is a physical unclonable function. The proposed PUF-based 5G-AKA improves the security vulnerabilities identified so far using the device-specific response for a specific challenge and hash function. This approach enables a strong white-list policy through the addition of inexpensive PUF circuits when utilizing 5G networks in areas where security is critical. In addition, since additional cryptographic algorithms are not applied to existing protocols, there is relatively little burden on increasing computational costs or increasing authentication parameter storage.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2021

The graph-based tag recommendation algorithm FolkRank can effectively utilize the relationships between three entities, namely users, items and tags, and achieve better tag recommendation performance. However, FolkRank does not consider the internal relationships of user-user, item-item and tag-tag. This leads to the failure of FolkRank to effectively map the tagging behavior which contains user neighbors and item neighbors to a tripartite graph. For item-item relationships, we can dig out items that are very similar to the target item, even though the target item may not have a strong connection to these similar items in the user-item-tag graph of FolkRank. Hence this paper proposes an improved FolkRank algorithm named FolkRank++, which fully considers the user-user and item-item internal relationships in tag recommendation by adding the correlation information between users or items. Based on the traditional FolkRank algorithm, an initial weight is also given to target user and target item's neighbors to supply the user-user and item-item relationships. The above work is mainly completed from two aspects: (1) Finding items similar to target item according to the attribute information, and obtaining similar users of the target user according to the history behavior of the user tagging items. (2) Calculating the weighted degree of items and users to evaluate their importance, then assigning initial weights to similar items and users. Experimental results show that this method has better recommendation performance.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.549-563
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• 2020

Based on Deleuze's body aesthetics and from the perspective of 'deterritoraliazation', this study makes an in-depth discussion on the modern fashion design modeling by four visual characteristics: hysteria, visualization, body segmentation and becoming animals. First, hysteria embodies the strong visual effect brought by the deformation and exaggeration of clothing. Second, visualization in fashion shows the elimination or ambiguity of faces, representing the weakening of identity and the prominence of clothing and body. Third, body segmentation represents the deconstruction and reorganization of clothing, and a new way of thinking, as well. Fourth, becoming-animals are manifested in the physical mutation caused by the heterogeneous connection between humans and animals, which brings about the possibility of rethinking the body.