• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.267-274
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• 2011

The environmental impacts of 95% remediation of a total petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soil were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA of two remediation systems, soil vapor extraction (SVE) and biopile, were conducted by using imput materials and energy listed in a remedial system standardization report. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results showed that the environmental impacts of SVE were all higher than those of biopile. Prominent four environmental impacts, human toxicity via soil, aquatic ecotoxicity, human toxicity via surface water and human toxicity via air, were apparently found from the LCIA results of the both remedial systems. Human toxicity via soil was the prominent impact of SVE, while aquatic ecotoxicity was the prominent impact of biopile. This study also showed that the operation stage and the activated carbon replacement stage contributed 60% and 36% of the environmental impacts of SVE system, respectively. The major input affecting the environmental impact of SVE was electricity. The operation stage of biopile resulted in the highest contribution to the entire environmental impact. The key input affecting the environmental impact of biopile was also electricity. This study suggested that electricity reduction strategies would be tried in the contaminated-soil remediation sites for archieving less environmental impacts. Remediation of contaminated soil normally takes long time and thus requires a great deal of material and energy. More extensive life cycle researches on remedial systems are required to meet recent national challenges toward carbon dioxide reduction and green growth. Furthermore, systematic information on electricity use of remedial systems should be collected for the reliable assessment of environmental impacts and carbon dioxide emissions during soil remediation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Resources Recycling Conference
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• 2001.05b
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• pp.109-112
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• 2001

A case study of foodwaste treatment was conducted to compare the impacts of four scenarios: incineration, incineration after biogasification, biogasification followed by composting, and composting. Potential contributions to climate change, acidification, consumption of landfill and human toxicity were assessed. Characterization of human toxicity caused by metals and PCDD/DF was performed by three multimedia fate models. Scenarios with a biogasification process showed lower impact on climate change and human toxicity. The ranking of four scenarios on human toxicity varied depending on the characterization models applied. The steady state models placed high priority on emission of heavy metals to farmland, whereas the dynamic model estimated the emission of PCDD/DF from the incineration process as more significant.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.502-509
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• 2007

This study evaluates thermal comfort by air conditioner temperature raising at the point of time that human body begins to adapt. Thermal comfort according to change of time enters by uncomfortable area gradually at general cold room temperature that magnetic pole is in human body. However, can know that keep continuous thermal comfort in case raise temperature in human body adaptation visual point. Experiments were performed in environmental chamber. Subjects were selected 4 men and 4 women whose life cycle were proved that are similar. The subjects stay in the pretesting room during the 30 minutes and enter the testing room under each experiment conditions. During the experiment, brain wave, electrocardiogram, blood pressure and thermal comfort and sensation responses were measured. In this study, physiological and psychological responses correspond under temperature raising at human body adaptation.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.65-71
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• 2014

Cell cycle process is regulated by a number of protein kinases and among them, serine/threonine kinases carry phosphate group from ATP to substrates. The most important three kinase families are Cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk), Polo-like kinase (Plk), and Aurora kinase. Polo-like kinase family consists of 5 members (Plk1-Plk5) and they are involved in multiple functions in eukaryotic cell division. It regulates a variety of aspects such as, centrosome maturation, checkpoint recovery, spindle assembly, cytokinesis, apoptosis and many other features. Recently, it has been reported that Plks are related to tumor development and over-expressed in many kinds of tumor cells. When injected the anti-Plk antibody into human cells, the cells show aneuploidy, and if inhibit Plks, most of the mitotic cell division does not proceed properly. For that reasons, many inhibitors of Plk have been recently emerged as new target for remedy of the cancer therapeutic research. In this paper, we reviewed briefly the characteristics of Plk families and how Plks work in regulating cell cycles and cancer formation, and the possibilities of Plks as target for cancer therapy.

• Clean Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.144-151
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• 2008

Life cycle assessment was carried out to evaluate the environmental values of dimethylas a diesel alternative fuel with the assumption of dimethyl ether production from natural gas via synthesis gas. The whole life cycles from raw material acquisitions to the final usages of diesel and dimethyl ether were involved in the assessment. Inventory analysis showed that the most significant environmental impacts came from resource depletions and air emissions. Impact assessment revealed that dimethyl ether was environmentally better in the aspect of human health and ecosystem quality but worse in resource depletions compared with diesel fuel. Suggestions for environmental improvement of dimethyl ether as a diesel alternative fuel were prepared based on the assessment results.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.145-145
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• 2021

Water distribution networks (WDNs) are designed to satisfy water requirement of an urban community. One of the central issues in human history is providing sufficient quality and quantity of water through WDNs. A WDN consists of a great number of pipelines with different ages, lengths, materials, and sizes in varying degrees of deterioration. The available annual budget for rehabilitation of these infrastructures only covers part of the network; thus it is important to manage the limited budget in the most cost-effective manner. In this study, a novel pipe replacement scheduling approach is proposed in order to smooth the annual investment time series based on a life cycle cost assessment. The proposed approach is applied to a real WDN currently operating in South Korea. The proposed scheduling plan considers both the annual budget limitation and the optimum investment on pipes' useful life. A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is used to solve a multi-objective optimization problem. Three decision-making objectives, including the minimum imposed LCC of the network, the minimum standard deviation of annual cost, and the minimum average age of the network, are considered to find optimal pipe replacement planning over long-term time period. The results indicate that the proposed scheduling structure provides efficient and cost-effective rehabilitation management of water network with consistent annual budget.

• BMB Reports
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.505-515
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• 2021

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) include human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) derived from blastocysts and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) generated from somatic cell reprogramming. Due to their self-renewal ability and pluripotent differentiation potential, hPSCs serve as an excellent experimental platform for human development, disease modeling, drug screening, and cell therapy. Traditionally, hPSCs were considered to form a homogenous population. However, recent advances in single cell technologies revealed a high degree of variability between individual cells within a hPSC population. Different types of heterogeneity can arise by genetic and epigenetic abnormalities associated with long-term in vitro culture and somatic cell reprogramming. These variations initially appear in a rare population of cells. However, some cancer-related variations can confer growth advantages to the affected cells and alter cellular phenotypes, which raises significant concerns in hPSC applications. In contrast, other types of heterogeneity are related to intrinsic features of hPSCs such as asynchronous cell cycle and spatial asymmetry in cell adhesion. A growing body of evidence suggests that hPSCs exploit the intrinsic heterogeneity to produce multiple lineages during differentiation. This idea offers a new concept of pluripotency with single cell heterogeneity as an integral element. Collectively, single cell heterogeneity is Janus-faced in hPSC function and application. Harmful heterogeneity has to be minimized by improving culture conditions and screening methods. However, other heterogeneity that is integral for pluripotency can be utilized to control hPSC proliferation and differentiation.

• Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

There are various understandings how to define death. In the context of medicine, death is defined as the irreversible change of the tissue according to the cessation of circulation and respiration. According to the psychologists, a person need to accept the finiteness as a human being and remain conscious that the death is not avoidable. And they say if a person doesn't regard death as unavoidable reality of life he or she will not confront the humanistic death and after all will die like animals. In philosophy, death is viewed as an unwelcome reality in the end of the journey of life. Sociologists usually understand that the society is the organization composed with living persons and human beings which construct and transmit the culture from generation to generation between the both ends of life and death. In society, the generation is changed, maintained, and developed through the phenomenon of death. Although death of human being is natural event in society, the death of a specific person brings a sense of loss, crisis, and anxiety to the communities like family, regional society, nation, and the world. In this context, death is not confined to personal dimension and it can be regarded as a social problem. It is valuable to summarize the religious perspectives on the meaning of death for the better hospice care. In shamanism, there are basic idea that although the flesh of human being disappears, soul never die. If human dies, the flesh of human being disappears but soul never disappear and come back to the origin of soul as it is called chaos. So in shamanism, it is said that shaman can solve the mortified feeling, restore the broken harmony, send the soul to comfortable space- the origin, and guarantee the blessing of descendents. Buddhists regard the death as an essential component through the cycles of life. Through this cycle, human being exits as an endlessly transmigrating being and the death is just a restoration to the original status. In Confucianism, the view on the death based on the philosophy of the "Yin and Yang" and "Five elements". In Buddhist tradition, many believers said the philosophy of "Death is the same as life". Unlike usual thoughts that a god governs "life and death" and "fortune and misfortune", Confucianists deny the governance of a god and emphasize the natural orders in which every phenomenon in the world moves according to the principle. Confucianists understand the death as a natural order with this principle. In Confucianists' belief, the essence of human being remains in their own descendent's lives after the death of ancestor, so in Confucianism there is no concept of immortality of the soul. In the history of Christianity, death has been defined generally as the separation of the immortal soul from the mortal body. In the earlier days of Old Testament, the death is regarded as a disappearance of just a flesh and human never disappear and always live in the relationship with God. Later days in Old Testament, we can find the growing concern for the life after the death because of the entrance of the theodicy. In the New Testament, the death is not regarded as the normal process of the human life and regarded as the abnormal status in which death come to human because of sin as a decisive factor and it should be conquered. In fact, the most of us afraid death because not of the fear of death itself but of the sense of the emptiness and regrets. so many people often make the monument hoping to live forever. But Christian usually regard this behavior as a sinful act because human being usually think themselves as a master of their life and attempt to become immortal in this kind of trial mortal. But if we live with God, we cannot confront such a condition because we aware limits as a mortal human being and entrust everything on Him and want to live according to His guidance. Therefore, in the Christian tradition, the death is regarded as accomplishment of life, fruits of life, invitation to the eternal life, and the last stage of human growth. For human being, the death is the great step of maturation as a human in the final stage of life.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.273-279
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• 2009

Hyungbangjihwang-Tang (HT), an Oriental herbal formula, has been known to play a role which helps to recover vigor of human in the Orient. In this study, antifungal substance (HTI) was purified from the ethyl-acetate extracts of HT by using $SiO_2$ column chromatography and HPLC, and the antifungal effects of HTI and its mode of action were investigated. By using a broth micro-dilution assay, the activity of HTI was evaluated against fungi. HTI showed antifungal activities without hemolytic effect against human erythrocytes. To confirm antifungal activity of HTI, we examined the accumulation of intracellular trehalose as stress response on toxic agents and effect on dimorphic transition in Candida albicans. The results demonstrated that HTI induced the accumulation of intracellular trehalose and exerted its antifungal effect by disrupting the mycelial forms. To understand its antifungal mode of action, cell cycle analysis was performed with C. albicans, and the results showed HTI arrested the cell cycle at the S phase in yeast. The present study indicates that HTI has considerable antifungal activity, deserving further investigation for clinical applications.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.287-294
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• 2016

The effect of kaempferol (3,5,7,4-tetrahydroxyflavone), a flavonoid compound that was identified in barnyard millet (Echinochloa crus-galli var. frumentacea) grains, on G₂-checkpoint and apoptotic pathways was investigated in human acute leukemia Jurkat T cell clones stably transfected with an empty vector (J/Neo) or a Bcl-xL expression vector (J/Bcl-xL). Exposure of J/Neo cells to kaempeferol caused cytotoxicity and activation of the ATM/ATR-Chk1/Chk2 pathway, activating the phosphorylation of p53 (Ser-15), inhibitory phosphorylation of Cdc25C (Ser-216), and inactivation of cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1), with resultant G₂-arrest of the cell cycle. Under these conditions, apoptotic events, including upregulation of Bak and PUMA levels, Bak activation, mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) loss, activation of caspase-9, -8, and -3, anti-poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) cleavage, and accumulation of apoptotic sub-G₁ cells, were induced without accompanying necrosis. However, these apoptotic events, except for upregulation of Bak and PUMA levels, were completely abrogated in J/Bcl-xL cells overexpressing Bcl-xL, suggesting that the G₂-arrest and the Bcl-xL-sensitive mitochondrial apoptotic events were induced, in parallel, as downstream events of the DNA-damage-mediated G₂-checkpoint activation. Together these results demonstrate that kaempferol-mediated antitumor activity toward Jurkat T cells was attributable to G₂-checkpoint activation, which caused not only G₂-arrest of the cell cycle but also activating phosphorylation of p53 (Ser-15) and subsequent induction of mitochondria-dependent apoptotic events, including Bak and PUMA upregulation, Bak activation, Δψm loss, and caspase cascade activation.