• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.287-293
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• 2012

Objectives: Metabolic syndrome has received attention as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, with particular importance attached to visceral fat accumulation, which is associated with lifestyle-related diseases and is strongly correlated with waist circumference. In this study, our aim is to propose waist circumference cut-off values that can be used as a marker for fatty liver based on a sample of workers receiving health checkups in Japan. Methods: This study was conducted in a total of 21,866 workers who underwent periodic health checkups between January 2007 and December 2007. The mean age of the subjects was 47.4 years for men (standard deviation [SD]: 8.0) and 44.7 years for women (SD: 6.9). Evaluation included abdominal ultrasound and measurement of waist circumference, body mass index, fasting blood glucose, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and blood pressure. Results: Based on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, the optimal waist circumference cut-off values were shown as 85.0 cm (sensitivity 0.72, specificity 0.69) for men and 80.0 cm (sensitivity 0.75, specificity 0.78) for women. Conclusion: Abdominal ultrasound is the most efficient means of diagnosing fatty liver, but this examination seldom occurs because the test is not routinely performed at workers' health checkups. In people found to have a high risk of fatty liver, recommendations can be made for abdominal ultrasound based on the waist circumference cut-off values obtained in this study. That is, waist circumference can be used in high risk individuals as an effective marker for early detection of fatty liver.

• The Journal of Korean Orthopaedic Ultrasound Society
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.91-93
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• 2008

De Quervain's disease is a stenosing tenosynovitis that affects the synovial sheath of the tendons of the abductor pollicis longus and extensor pollicis brevis; it can be considered a work-related disease, since it frequently is associated with highly repetitive movements in jobs using the hands. The usual sign and symptom of de Quervain's diseases are positive Finkelstein's sign and pain and tenderness around the radial styloid process. The majority of de Quervain's disease has a good results to conservative treatment, but surgery can be performed in case of recurrence or pain last more than 6 months without improvement in spite of conservative treatment. We diagnosed a patient with atypical de Quervain's disease by ultrasonography, treated by local steroid injection and pain was relieved. We report a case of atypical de Quervain's disease evaluated by ultrasonography with brief of literatures.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.321-331
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• 2013

Objective: The aim of this study is to review the literatures on the regulation, standard and guideline for the human vibration in Korea and other countries. Background: This review can be used to prevent various diseases caused by the human vibration as a basis for the development of the policy. Results: In Korea, the general employers' duties related to human vibration are set forth the Health Measures(Article 24) in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. And then an employer shall take measures to protect the health of the workers concerned by improving other working conditions relating to working hours for the vibration prevention measures referred to in Article 24 of the Act. The European Union adopted a Directive in 2002 on minimum requirements for the health and safety of workers exposed to vibration. New Regulations on Vibration at Work will be introduced in Great Britain on 2005 to implement the Directive. In the U.S., both ANSI and ACGIH adopted the ISO standard for measurement and suggested exposure action and limit values. In Japan, the Ministry of Labor decided that the vibration syndrome among operators of rock drills and riveters etc. could be included in an occupational disease(1947). In addition, ISO standard was based on proposals and draft documents of many countries such as U.K, Japan and European, etc. Conclusion: In Korea, Occupational Safety and Health Act prevent vibration to health, but do not include exposure limits. It is therefore important to consider the new duties regarding to vibration risks added to the general duties.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.71-80
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• 2017

Purpose: At the moment prevention and treatment of animal related diseases is becoming a social concern as the demand for animal increases. Furthermore, The design of the veterinary medical teaching hospital are even more complex because they have to accommodate medical program for animal and education and research program for students. However, there are a few experience and useful guidelines for the planning of the veterinary medical teaching hospital. So it is not easy for the regional hub universities to work out the proper plan for the construction of the veterinary medical teaching hospital for their own. This study has been started in order to provide basic informations for the planning of Korean veterinary medical teaching hospital. Methods: Interview to veterinarian, intern and employee of the veterinary medical teaching hospital and Field surveys to veterinary medical teaching hospital in Korea have been conducted for the data collection. The drawings of three universities of veterinary medical teaching hospital have been analysed and diagramed. Results: The result of this study can be summarized into three points. The first one is that the veterinary medical teaching hospital spaces are divided into five areas (ambulatory care, central medical care, hospitalization, education and research, operations and support) and each area is divided independently and connected properly. The second one is that the veterinary medical teaching hospital differs from hospital in the detailed space plan in the sense that the animal is a patient. The third one is that each hospital has different operating practices and programs according to local conditions Implications: It is meaningful as a basic source of veterinary medical teaching hospital design in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.149-156
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• 2020

In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, successful cases using big data in various industries are reported. This paper examines cases that successfully use big data in the medical industry to develop the service and draws implications in value that big data create. The related work introduces big data technology in the medical field and cases of eight innovative service in the big data service are explained. In the introduction, the overall structure of the study is mentioned by describing the background and direction of this study. In the literature study, we explain the definition and concept of big data, and the use of big data in the medical industry. Next, this study describes the several cases, such as technologies using national health information and personal genetic information for the study of diseases, personal health services using personal biometric information, use of medical data for efficiency of business processes, and medical big data for the development of new medicines. In the conclusion, we intend to provide direction for the academic and business implications of this study, as well as how the results of the study can help the domestic medical industry.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.465-475
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• 2021

The aim of this study was to characterize potential fungal species affecting mangrove species in Mexico. The phytopathogens were identified based on morphological and molecular characteristics using internal transcribed spacer (ITS1/ITS4) primers then sequenced and compared with the other related sequences in GenBank (NCBI). Three fungal species were identified as Colletotrichum queenslandicum (Weir and Johnst, 2012) from black mangrove (Avicennia germinans); Colletotrichum ti (Weir and Johnst, 2012) from white mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa) and buttonwood mangrove (Conocarpus erectus); Fusarium equiseti (Corda) from red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle). In addition, C. ti and F. equiseti were identified from mango Mangifera indica L. sampled close by the mangrove area. This study provides first evidence of anthracnose on four mangrove species caused by Colletotrichum and Fusarium species in the "Términos" coastal lagoon in Campeche State southern Mexico. This is the first time that C. queenslandicum and C. ti are reported in Mexico. F. equiseti has not been reported affecting M. indica and R. mangle until the present work. Little is known regarding fungal diseases affecting mangroves in Mexico. These ecosystems are protected by Mexican laws and may be threatened by these pathogenic fungus. This is the first report of the effect of Trichoderma harzianum TRICHO-SIN as an effective biological control against of Colletotrichum and Fusarium species.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2019

Background: As of now, the impact of low back pain (LBP) and its chronic state, chronic low back pain (CLBP), on mental health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has never been investigated among police officers. The present investigation aims at studying this relationship using a biopsychosocial model. Methods: Between May and October 2014, a Web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among Quebec police officers (Quebec, Canada). Mental HRQOL was measured using the role emotional (RE) and the mental health (MH) domains of the SF-12v2 Health Survey. The impact of CLBP on mental HRQOL (as opposed to acute/subacute LBP or no LBP) was studied with a multivariate linear regression model. Results: Of the 3,589 police officers who participated in the study, 1,013 (28.4%) reported CLBP. The mean age of respondents was $38.5{\pm}8.7years$, and 32.0% were females. The RE (44.1/100) and MH (49.0/100) mean scores of the CLBP group were comparable with the scores found in populations suffering from cancer or heart diseases. Compared to officers without LBP, the presence of CLBP was significantly associated with lower RE (${\beta}$: -0.068; p = 0.003) and MH (${\beta}$: -0.062; p = 0.002) scores. These relationships were not found in the acute/subacute LBP group. Conclusion: Our results underscore how frequent CLBP is among police officers and how burdensome it is. Considering the importance of good physical and mental health for this occupational population, police organizations should be aware of this issue and contribute to the efforts toward CLBP prevention and management in the workplace.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.365-377
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• 2022

Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a serine-threonine kinase member of the cellular phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway, which is involved in multiple biological functions by transcriptional and translational control. mTOR is a downstream mediator in the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway and plays a critical role in cell survival. In cancer, this pathway can be activated by membrane receptors, including the HER (or ErbB) family of growth factor receptors, the insulin-like growth factor receptor, and the estrogen receptor. In the present work, we congregated an electronic network of mTORC1 built on an assembly of data using natural language processing, consisting of 470 edges (activations/interactions and/or inhibitions) and 206 nodes representing genes/proteins, using the Cytoscape 3.6.0 editor and its plugins for analysis. The experimental design included the extraction of gene expression data related to five distinct types of cancers, namely, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, hepatic cirrhosis, cervical cancer, glioblastoma, and anaplastic thyroid cancer from Gene Expression Omnibus (NCBI GEO) followed by pre-processing and normalization of the data using R & Bioconductor. ExprEssence plugin was used for network condensation to identify differentially expressed genes across the gene expression samples. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis was performed to find out the over-represented GO terms in the network. In addition, pathway enrichment and functional module analysis of the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were also conducted. Our results indicated NOTCH1, NOTCH3, FLCN, SOD1, SOD2, NF1, and TLR4 as upregulated proteins in different cancer types highlighting their role in cancer progression. The MCODE analysis identified gene clusters for each cancer type with MYC, PCNA, PARP1, IDH1, FGF10, PTEN, and CCND1 as hub genes with high connectivity. MYC for cervical cancer, IDH1 for hepatic cirrhosis, MGMT for glioblastoma and CCND1 for anaplastic thyroid cancer were identified as genes with prognostic importance using survival analysis.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.790-800
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• 2022

Background: Panax ginseng Meyer is one of the most valuable medicinal plants which is enriched in anti-microbe secondary metabolites and widely used in traditional medicine. Botrytis cinerea is a necrotrophic fungus that causes gray mold disease in a broad range of hosts. B. cinerea could overcome the ginseng defense and cause serious leaf and root diseases with unknown mechanism. Methods: We conducted simultaneous transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis of the host to investigate the defense response of ginseng affected by B. cinerea. The gene deletion and replacement were then performed to study the pathogenic gene in B. cinerea during ginseng - fungi interaction. Results: Upon B. cinerea infection, ginseng defense responses were switched from the activation to repression, thus the expression of many defense genes decreased and the biosynthesis of antifungal metabolites were reduced. Particularly, ginseng metabolites like kaempferol, quercetin and luteolin which could inhibit fungi growth were decreased after B. cinerea infection. B. cinerea quercetin dioxygenase (Qdo) involved in catalyzing flavonoids degradation and ∆BcQdo mutants showed increased substrates accumulation and reduced disease development. Conclusion: This work indicates the flavonoids play a role in ginseng defense and BcQdo involves in B. cinerea virulence towards the P. ginseng. B. cinerea promotes disease development in ginseng by suppressing of defense related genes expression and reduction of antifungal metabolites biosynthesis.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2023

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease with progressive memory loss and the cognitive decline. AD is mainly caused by abnormal accumulation of misfolded amyloid β (Aβ), which leads to neurodegeneration via a number of possible mechanisms such as down-regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor-tropomyosin-related kinase B (BDNF-TRKB) signaling pathway. 7,8-Dihydroxyflavone (7,8-DHF), a TRKB agonist, has demonstrated potential to enhance BDNF-TRKB pathway in various neurodegenerative diseases. To expand the capacity of flavones as TRKB agonists, two natural flavones quercetin and apigenin, were evaluated. With tryptophan fluorescence quenching assay, we illustrated the direct interaction between quercetin/apigenin and TRKB extracellular domain. Employing Aβ folding reporter SH-SY5Y cells, we showed that quercetin and apigenin reduced Aβ-aggregation, oxidative stress, caspase-1 and acetylcholinesterase activities, as well as improved the neurite outgrowth. Treatments with quercetin and apigenin increased TRKB Tyr516 and Tyr817 and downstream cAMP-response-element binding protein (CREB) Ser133 to activate transcription of BDNF and BCL2 apoptosis regulator (BCL2), as well as reduced the expression of pro-apoptotic BCL2 associated X protein (BAX). Knockdown of TRKB counteracted the improvement of neurite outgrowth by quercetin and apigenin. Our results demonstrate that quercetin and apigenin are to work likely as a direct agonist on TRKB for their neuroprotective action, strengthening the therapeutic potential of quercetin and apigenin in treating AD.