• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.91-98
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• 2011

Quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) have been applied for two decades in the development of relationships between physicochemical properties of chemical substances and their biological activities to obtain a reliable statistical model for prediction of the activities of new chemical entities. The fundamental principle underlying the QSAR is that the structural difference is responsible for the variations in biological activities of the compounds. In this work, we developed 3D-QSAR model for a series of 5-Lipoxygenase inhibitors, utilizing comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and Topomer CoMFA methodologies. Our developed models addressed superiority of Topomer CoMFA over CoMFA. The CoMFA model was obtained with $q^2$=0.593, $r^2$=0.939, $Q^2$=0.334 with 6 optimum number of components (ONC). Higher statistical results were obtained with the Topomer CoMFA model ($q^2$=0.819, $r^2$=0.947, ONC=5). Further robustness of developed models was checked with the ANOVA test and it shows F=113 for CoMFA and F=162.4 for Topomer CoMFA model. Contour map analysis indicated that the more requirement of electrostatic parameter for improved potency.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.179-187
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• 2015

Purpose: This study was done to evaluate the effects of a recreation therapy program on burn rehabilitation patients to determine if the program is an effective nursing intervention which can affect mental health problems and heart rate variability. Methods: Subjects were 54 hospitalized burn rehabilitation patients (25 in the control group, 29 in the experimental group). The experimental group participated 6 times in a recreation therapy program led by a qualified instructor. Brief symptoms inventory-18 (somatization, anxiety, depression) questionnaire, and heart rate variability were checked before and after the recreation therapy program. Results: The mental health scale showed significant differences in somatization (p<.001), anxiety (p<.001) and depression (p<.001). There was no significant difference in heart rate variability (autonomic activity, autonomic balance, stress resistance, stress parameter and fatigue, mean heart rate, electro-cardiac stability). Conclusion: The findings from this study suggest that a recreation therapy program is an effective nursing intervention to decrease the level of mental health problems of burn rehabilitation patients. However, a subsequent study is needed to develop an intervention program that will induce the effect of physiological parameters like heart rate variability (HRV).

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.277-286
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• 2008

This paper deals with the theoretical derivation of the modified Haldane model of the substrate inhibition in the microbial growth processes. Based on the biological concepts of substrate-receptor complex working mechanisms, a new microbial kinetics of N-fold multiplex substrate inhibition and its generalization has been considered theoretically, which is natural expansion of the simple substrate inhibition mechanism in the enzyme reaction. As a result, the modified Haldane model of the substrate inhibition turns out to be a well-designed four-parameter kinetic model with a biological constant of the total substrate inhibition concentration.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.251-273
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• 2020

Soil degradation has become a major worldwide environmental problem, particularly in arid and semi-arid climate zones due to irregular rainfall and the intensity of storms that frequently generate heavy flooding. The main objective of this study is the use of geographic information system and remote sensing techniques to quantify and to map the soil losses in the Wadi Saida watershed (624 ㎢) through the revised universal soil loss equation model and a proposed model based on the surface erosive runoff. The results Analysis revealed that the Wadi Saida watershed showed moderate to moderately high soil loss, between 0 and 1000 t/㎢/year. In the northern part of the basin in the region of Sidi Boubkeur and the mountains of Daia; which are characterized by steep slopes, values can reach up to 3000 t/㎢/year. The two models in comparison showed a good correlation with R = 0.95 and RMSE = 0.43; the use of the erosive surface runoff parameter is effective to estimate the rate of soil loss in the watersheds. The problem of soil erosion requires serious interventions, particularly in basins with disturbances and aggressive climatic parameters. Good agricultural practices and forest preservation areas play an important role in soil conservation.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.510-518
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• 2016

Ethyl cellulose-g-poly(ethylene glycol) (EP) was synthesized by esterification of carboxylic acid functionalized methoxy polyethylene glycol (MPEG-COOH) with ethyl cellulose (EC) in order to develop a hydrophilic substrate for thin-film composite (TFC) membrane in a forward osmosis (FO) system. A porous EP substrate, fabricated by a non-solvent induced phase separation method, was found to be more hydrophilic than the EC substrate due to the presence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) side chains in the EP. Since the EP substrate exhibits smaller water contact angles and higher porosity, the structural parameter (S) of TFC-EP is smaller than that of TFC-EC, indicating that internal concentration polarization (ICP) within porous substrates can occur less when TFC-EP is used as a membrane. For example, the water flux value of the TFC-EP is 15.7 LMH, whereas the water flux value of the TFC-EC is only 6.6 LMH. Therefore, we strongly believe that the TFC-EP could be a promising candidate with good FO performances.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.161-167
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• 2016

Recent technological advances in sensor fabrication and bio-signal processing enabled non-constraint and non-intrusive measurement of human bio-signals. Especially, non-constraint measurement of ECG makes it available to estimate various human health parameters such as heart rate. Additionally, non-constraint ECG measurement of wheelchair user provides real-time health parameter information for emergency response. For accurate emergency response with low false alarm rate, it is necessary to discriminate quality levels of ECG measured using non-constraint approach. Health parameters acquired from low quality ECG results in inaccurate information. Thus, in this study, a machine learning based approach for three-class classification of ECG quality level is suggested. Three sensors are embedded in the back seat, chest belt, and handle of automatic wheelchair. For the two sensors embedded in back seat and chest belt, capacitively coupled electrodes were used. The accuracy of quality level classification was estimated using Monte Carlo cross validation. The proposed approach demonstrated accuracy of 94.01%, 95.57%, and 96.94% for each channel of three sensors. Furthermore, the implemented algorithm enables classification of user posture by detection of contacted electrodes. The accuracy for posture estimation was 94.57%. The proposed algorithm will contribute to non-constraint and robust estimation of health parameter of wheelchair users.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.268-276
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• 2021

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based brain-computer interface (fNIRS-based BCI) has been receiving much attention. However, we are practically constrained to obtain a lot of fNIRS data by inherent hemodynamic delay. For this reason, when employing machine learning techniques, a problem due to the high-dimensional feature vector may be encountered, such as deteriorated classification accuracy. In this study, we employ an elastic net-based feature selection which is one of the embedded methods and demonstrate the utility of which by analyzing the results. Using the fNIRS dataset obtained from 18 participants for classifying brain activation induced by mental arithmetic and idle state, we calculated classification accuracies after performing feature selection while changing the parameter α (weight of lasso vs. ridge regularization). Grand averages of classification accuracy are 80.0 ± 9.4%, 79.3 ± 9.6%, 79.0 ± 9.2%, 79.7 ± 10.1%, 77.6 ± 10.3%, 79.2 ± 8.9%, and 80.0 ± 7.8% for the various values of α = 0.001, 0.005, 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5, respectively, and are not statistically different from the grand average of classification accuracy estimated with all features (80.1 ± 9.5%). As a result, no difference in classification accuracy is revealed for all considered parameter α values. Especially for α = 0.5, we are able to achieve the statistically same level of classification accuracy with even 16.4% features of the total features. Since elastic net-based feature selection can be easily applied to other cases without complicated initialization and parameter fine-tuning, we can be looking forward to seeing that the elastic-based feature selection can be actively applied to fNIRS data.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.343-350
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• 2003

This study was conducted to find out the coefficient relationships between intensity values of image processing and biological/physical parameters of soil in greenhouses. Soil images were obtained by an image processing system consisting of a personal computer and a CCD earners. A software written in Visual C$\^$++/ systematically integrated the functions of image capture, image processing, and image analysis. Image processing data of the soil samples were analyzed by the method of regression analysis. The results are as follows. For detecting soil density of unbroken soil samples, the highest correlation coefficients of 0.82 and 0.84, respectively were obtained fur R-value and S-value among image processing data while it was 0.97 for G-value. Considering the relationship between biological characteristics and image processing data of soil in greenhouse, the correlation was found generally low. For pH of unbroken soil sample, the correlation coefficients were found 0.87, 0.85, and 0.94, respectively with G, I, and H values of image processing data. In the case of bacteria, any correlation was not found with the image processing data For Actinomyctes, they were 0.86 and 0.85, respectively with G-value and B-value of image processing data showing high correlation coefficient compared to the other variables. The correlation coefficient between Fungi and H-value was shown 0.88, the highest among the variables higher than 0.8 while the other variables showed low correlation. For broken soil samples from greenhouse, the relation between biological parameter and image processing data were rarely shown in this study. The results of this study indicated that most of correlation coefficient between the variables were usually lower than 0.01. Accordingly, it was assumed that the soil should be used without broken to fairly estimate biological characteristics using CCD camera.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.440-447
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• 2013

The ecological health, based on the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) and Qualitative Habitat Evaluation Index (QHEI) was evaluated in 10 stream sites of Southern Han River. Eleven parameters of 12 parameters (Karr 1981) were modified for the application of regional Korean circumstance. The ecological health, based on IBI grade, was in "good condition" and the IBI score ranged from 33 to 47. Nine parameters of the original 12-parameter metrics in QHEI model (Plafkin et al. 1989) were applied in the habitat assessment. The mean QHEI model values were judged as "partially supporting" and ranged from 75 (non-supporting) to 109 (supporting). Comparative analyses revealed that values of IBI and QHEI models were greater in Gj stream than Ig- and Dn streams. The analysis of fish compositions showed that the proportions of insectivore, omnivore, and carnivore were 61.9%, 19%, and 9.5%, respectively. According to tolerance guild analysis, sensitive species and tolerant species were 76.1% and 4.7%, respectively, indicating a healthy trophic state in terms of food chain. The analysis by habitat guild type indicated that riffle benthic species dominated (57.1%) when compared to water column species (28.5%). The introduced species and individuals with diseases or external abnormality were not observed. Overall, the model values of IBI and QHEI suggested that the ecological health was maintained well in this upstream region.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.307-318
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• 2015

The objectives of this study were to identify multi-level stressors from blood biomarkers to community-level bioindicators and diagnose the stream ecosystem health in polluted streams. Blood chemistry such as total protein ($T_{Pro}$), blood urea nitrogen ($B_{UN}$), total cholesterol ($T_{Cho}$) and $A_{lb}$umin ($A_{lb}$) were analyzed from sentinel fish tissues; the functions of kidney, gill and liver were significantly decreased in the impacted zone ($I_z$), compared to the control zone ($C_z$). Histopathological analysis showed that fish liver tissues were normal in the $C_z$. Fish liver tissues in the $I_z$, however, showed large cell necrosis and degeneration and also had moderate lobular inflammation and inflammatory cell infiltration of lymphocytic histocytes. Species biotic index (SBI) at species level and stream health assessment (SHA) at community level indicated that chemical impacts were evident in the $I_z$ (ecological health; poor - very poor), and this was matched with the blood tissue analysis and histopathological analysis. The impairments of the streams were supported by water chemistry analysis (nitrogen, phosphorus). Tolerance guild analysis and trophic guild analysis of fish were showed significant differences (P < 0.01) between $C_z$ and $I_z$. Overall, multiple parameter analysis from biomarker level (blood tissues) to bioindicator level (community health) showed significantly greater impacts in the $I_z$ than $C_z$. This approach may be effective as a monitoring tool in identifying the multilateral and forthcoming problems related to chemical pollution and habitat degradation of stream ecosystems.