• Title/Summary/Keyword: human threat

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As a Modulator, Multitasking Roles of SIRT1 in Respiratory Diseases

  • Yunxin Zhou;Fan Zhang;Junying Ding
    • IMMUNE NETWORK
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.21.1-21.21
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    • 2022
  • As far the current severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), respiratory disease is still the biggest threat to human health. In addition, infectious respiratory diseases are particularly prominent. In addition to killing and clearing the infection pathogen directly, regulating the immune responses against the pathogens is also an important therapeutic modality. Sirtuins belong to NAD+-dependent class III histone deacetylases. Among 7 types of sirtuins, silent information regulator type-1 (SIRT1) played a multitasking role in modulating a wide range of physiological processes, including oxidative stress, inflammation, cell apoptosis, autophagy, antibacterial and antiviral functions. It showed a critical effect in regulating immune responses by deacetylation modification, especially through high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), a core molecule regulating the immune system. SIRT1 was associated with many respiratory diseases, including COVID-19 infection, bacterial pneumonia, tuberculosis, and so on. Here, we reviewed the latest research progress regarding the effects of SIRT1 on immune system in respiratory diseases. First, the structure and catalytic characteristics of SIRT1 were introduced. Next, the roles of SIRT1, and the mechanisms underlying the immune regulatory effect through HMGB1, as well as the specific activators/inhibitors of SIRT1, were elaborated. Finally, the multitasking roles of SIRT1 in several respiratory diseases were discussed separately. Taken together, this review implied that SIRT1 could serve as a promising specific therapeutic target for the treatment of respiratory diseases.

Monte Carlo Simulation-Based Cost Estimation for Floating Trash Barrier Maintenance (몬테카를로 시뮬레이션 기반 부유 쓰레기 차단막 유지관리 비용 추정 방안)

  • Kim, Seokhwan;Kim, Taegeon;Kim, Hongjo
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.231-235
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    • 2024
  • Marine debris entering through rivers negatively impacts the environment and poses a direct threat to human health. While barriers to prevent the outflow of floating debris are being installed, attention to their maintenance, especially the scheduling of garbage collection, is insufficient. Currently, maintenance relies on a sequential collection method based on the experience and know-how of field workers, with little systematic research to support it. In response, this study proposes a new feedback-based collection method based on YOLOv7, Monte Carlo simulation for trash collection analysis. The proposed method conducts collection based on the amount of trash detected by remote sensors such as CCTV, and the expected costs are statistically and economically compared using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). The results showed that the new collection strategy offers a cost advantage of about 63 % over the existing strategy.

"Liability of Air Carriers for Injuries Resulting from International Aviation Terrorism" (국제항공(國際航空)테러리즘으로 인한 여객손해(旅客損害)에 대한 운송인(運送人)의 책임(責任))

  • Choi, Wan-Sik
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.1
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    • pp.47-85
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    • 1989
  • The Fundamental purpose of the Warsaw Convention was to establish uniform rules applicable to international air transportation. The emphasis on the benefits of uniformity was considered important in the beginning and continues to be important to the present. If the desire for uniformity is indeed the mortar which holds the Warsaw system together then it should be possible to agree on a worldwide liability limit. This liability limit would not be so unreasonable, that it would be impossible for nations to adhere to it. It would preclude any national supplemental compensation plan or Montreal Agreement type of requirement in any jurisdiction. The differentiation of liability limits by national requirement seems to be what is occurring. There is a plethora of mandated limits and Montreal Agreement type 'voluntary' limits. It is becoming difficult to find more than a few major States where an unmodified Warsaw Convention or Hague Protocol limitation is still in effect. If this is the real world in the 1980's, then let the treaty so reflect it. Upon reviewing the Warsaw Convention, its history and the several attempts to amend it, strengths become apparent. Hijackings of international flights have given rise to a number of lawsuits by passengers to recover damages for injuries suffered. This comment is concerned with the liability of an airline for injuries to its passengers resulting from aviation terrorism. In addition, analysis is focused on current airline security measures, particularly the pre-boarding screening system, and the duty of air carriers to prevent weapons from penetrating that system. An airline has a duty to exercise a high degree of care to protect its passengers from the threat of aviation terrorism. This duty would seemingly require the airline to exercise a high degree of care to prevent any passenger from smuggling a weapon or explosive device aboard its aircraft. In the case an unarmed hijacker who boards having no instrument in his possession with which to promote the hoax, a plaintiff-passenger would be hard-pressed to show that the airline was negligent in screening the hijacker prior to boarding. In light of the airline's duty to exercise a high degree of care to provide for the safety of all the passengers on board, an acquiescene to a hijacker's demands on the part of the air carrier could constitute a breach of duty only when it is clearly shown that the carrier's employees knew or plainly should have known that the hijacker was unarmed. A finding of willful misconduct on the part of an air carrier, which is a prerequisite to imposing unlimited liability, remains a question to be determined by a jury using the definition or standard of willful misconduct prevailing in the jurisdiction of the forum court. Through the willful misconduct provision of the Warsaw Convention, air carrier face the possibility of unlimited liability for failure to implement proper preventive precautions against terrorist. Courts, therefore, should broadly construe the willful misconduct provision of the Warsaw Convention in order to find unlimited liability for passenger injuries whenever air carrier security precautions are lacking. In this way, the courts can help ensure air carrier safety and prevention against terrorist attack. Air carriers, therefore, would have an incentive to increase, impose and maintain security precautions designed to thwart such potential terrorist attacks as in the case of Korean Air Lines Flight No.858 incident having a tremendous impact on the civil aviation community. The crash of a commercial airliner, with the attending tragic loss of life and massive destruction of property, always gives rise to shock and indignation. The general opinion is that the legal system could be sufficient, provided that the political will is there to use and apply it effectively. All agreed that the main responsibility for security has to be borne by the governments. I would like to remind all passengers that every discovery of the human spirit may be used for opposite ends; thus, aircraft can be used for air travel but also as targets of terrorism. A state that supports aviation terrorism is responsible for violation of International Aviation Law. Generally speaking, terrorism is a violation of international law. It violates the soverign rights of the states, and the human rights of the individuals. I think that aviation terrorism as becoming an ever more serious issue, has to be solved by internationally agreed and closely co-ordinated measures. We have to contribute more to the creation of a general consensus amongst all states about the need to combat the threat of aviation terrorism.

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Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in the Vicinity of the Abandoned Metal Mine Areas (폐금속광산지역 중금속의 위해성 평가)

  • Lee, Jin-Soo;Kwon, Hyun-Ho;Shim, Yon-Sik;Kim, Tae-Heok
    • Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.97-102
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    • 2007
  • An environmental survey from three abandoned metal mine areas was undertaken on to assess the risk of adverse health effects on human exposure to heavy metals influenced by past mining activities. Tailings contained high concentrations of heavy metals may have a impact on soils and waters around the tailing piles. In order to perform the human risk assessment, chemical analysis data of soils, rice grains and waters for As, Cd, Cu and Pb have been used. The HQ values for heavy metals via the rice consumption were significantly higher compared with other exposure pathways in all metal mine areas. The resulting HI values in three mine areas were higher than 9.0, and their toxic risk due to rice ingestion was strong in these mine areas. The cancer risk of being exposed to As by the rice consumption from the A, B and C mine areas was $5.1\;{\times}\;10^{-3}$, $6.8\;{\times}\;10^{-3}$ and $3.1\;{\times}\;10^{-3}$, respectively. The As cancer risk via the exposure pathway of rice ingestion from these mine areas exceeds the acceptable risk of 1 in 10,000 set for regulatory purposes. Thus, the daily intakes of rice by the local residents from these mine areas can pose a potential health threat if exposed by long-term As exposure.

Epigenetic Regulation of Fungal Development and Pathogenesis in the Rice Blast Fungus

  • Jeon, Junhyun
    • 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
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    • 2014.10a
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    • pp.11-11
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    • 2014
  • Fungal pathogens have huge impact on health and economic wellbeing of human by causing life-threatening mycoses in immune-compromised patients or by destroying crop plants. A key determinant of fungal pathogenesis is their ability to undergo developmental change in response to host or environmental factors. Genetic pathways that regulate such morphological transitions and adaptation are therefore extensively studied during the last few decades. Given that epigenetic as well as genetic components play pivotal roles in development of plants and mammals, contribution of microbial epigenetic counterparts to this morphogenetic process is intriguing yet nearly unappreciated question to date. To bridge this gap in our knowledge, we set out to investigate histone modifications among epigenetic mechanisms that possibly regulate fungal adaptation and processes involved in pathogenesis of a model plant pathogenic fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. M. oryzae is a causal agent of rice blast disease, which destroys 10 to 30% of the rice crop annually. Since the rice is the staple food for more than half of human population, the disease is a major threat to global food security. In addition to the socioeconomic impact of the disease it causes, the fungus is genetically tractable and can undergo well-defined morphological transitions including asexual spore production and appressorium (a specialized infection structure) formation in vitro, making it a model to study fungal development and pathogenicity. For functional and comparative analysis of histone modifications, a web-based database (dbHiMo) was constructed to archive and analyze histone modifying enzymes from eukaryotic species whose genome sequences are available. Histone modifying enzymes were identified applying a search pipeline built upon profile hidden Markov model (HMM) to proteomes. The database incorporates 22,169 histone-modifying enzymes identified from 342 species including 214 fungal, 33 plants, and 77 metazoan species. The dbHiMo provides users with web-based personalized data browsing and analysis tools, supporting comparative and evolutionary genomics. Based on the database entries, functional analysis of genes encoding histone acetyltransferases and histone demethylases is under way. Here I provide examples of such analyses that show how histone acetylation and methylation is implicated in regulating important aspects of fungal pathogenesis. Current analysis of histone modifying enzymes will be followed by ChIP-Seq and RNA-seq experiments to pinpoint the genes that are controlled by particular histone modifications. We anticipate that our work will provide not only the significant advances in our understanding of epigenetic mechanisms operating in microbial eukaryotes but also basis to expand our perspective on regulation of development in fungal pathogens.

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Effects of Constitutional Food on Nurse's NK Cell Activity and Stress Reduction (체질푸드가 간호사의 스트레스 감소와 NK세포 활성도에 미치는 영향)

  • Park, Sun-Mi
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.19 no.3
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    • pp.500-509
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    • 2019
  • The study looked at the effect of body food on stress reduction and NK cell activity in improving natural healing for nurses, and examined whether it is effective in preventing and curing human health. The study was conducted for 30 days on 22 nurses who currently worked for more than a year at a general hospital in Gyeonggi Province. Stress measurements were conducted through pulse wave measuring instrument, and blood tests were conducted on the activity of NK cells. Treatment of collected data was performed by Paired t-testing through the Stat program SPSS 21 and providing body food suitable for the physical quality of participants after the classification of the body based on the internal diameter of the emperor and scholarship. Studies have shown that the effect on reducing the stress of body food has significant positive effects and that body food is effective for the activity of NK cells. This study has the following significance: First, the main health threat factor for modern people is the increased resistance of natural healing through body food to stress, which has the potential to prevent disease. Second, immunodeficiency in disease prevention and treatment is very important, which can increase the natural healing power of the human body by increasing the activity of NK cells through body food.

Political Participation of Conservative Protestant Churches and Democracy in Argentine (아르헨티나 보수 개신교의 정치 참여와 민주주의)

  • Kim, Hang-Seob
    • Iberoamérica
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    • v.23 no.2
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    • pp.55-91
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    • 2021
  • This article dealing with the political participation of Argentine Conservative Protestants tried to examine the effect of such political participation on democratic values and order. To this end, it focused on the subject of religious equality and freedom, and issues of same-sex marriage and sex education. First, the demands of the Protestants, who insisted on the equal treatment of all religions by correcting the religious discrimination policies, a legacy of the colonial era and the military regime, are very natural and self-evident, when we presuppose the value of a democratic society based on political equality and human rights. It can be said that it has contributed to the democratization of society by aiming to solve the old problems of society. But when it comes to same-sex marriage and sex education, things are quite different. Without considering the social situations of the socially disadvantaged or minorities, or the legislative purpose of defending their rights, they insist on only their teachings of scriptures or ethics, even within Protestantism, there is a disagreement on interpretation. These theocratic views and exclusivist attitudes can seriously infringe on the human rights or freedoms of people of different religions, or different choices about marriage or sexuality, among other things. It can be a serious threat to democratic order and values.

One-health Approach in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Focusing on Animal Infection (One-health 관점에서 본 Post-COVID-19 시대의 동물 감염)

  • Hye-Jeong Jang;Sun-Nyoung Yu;O-Yu Kwon;Soon-Cheol Ahn
    • Journal of Life Science
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.199-207
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    • 2023
  • To prepare for the threat of a future epidemic in the post-COVID-19 era, research based on the one-health concept (i.e., the health of humans, animals, and the environment as "one") is essential. Cross-species infections are being identified as a result of the high infection rate and viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. The possibility of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to mink has been determined. In addition, the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to cats through contact has been considered possible. The data so far show that livestock and poultry are less likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2. However, if infections are established through a new mutation, the resulting diseases are expected to have enormous ripple effects on various fields, such as human food security, the economy, and trade. In addition, there are concerns about the endemic prospect of SARS-CoV-2 and the high accessibility of companion animals. This is because the evolution of the virus likely occurs in animal hosts. Once SARS-CoV-2 is established in other species, they might serve as intermediate hosts for the re-emergence of the virus in the human population. Thus, it is necessary to ensure a rapid response to future outbreaks by accumulating research data on the animal infection of SARS-CoV-2. These data can have implications for the development of animal models for vaccines and therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, in this study, epidemiological reviews were analyzed, and response strategies against SARS-CoV-2 infection in animals were presented using the One-health approach.

A Study on the Evacuation Behavior of Students Due to Tsunami Occurrence in Coastal Areas: Focusing on the Great East Japan Earthquake (연안지역 지진해일 발생에 따른 학생들의 피난행동에 관한 연구 -동일본 대지진을 중심으로-)

  • Won-Jo Jung;Akihito Souda;Takashi Yokota;Tadasu Iida;Koji Itami;Myung-Kwon Lee
    • Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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    • v.47 no.1
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    • pp.18-24
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    • 2023
  • After the Great East Japan Earthquake, many reports and books that compiled testimonies of adult victims were published. Thus, refugee situations are well known, but information on the refugee situations of Japanese students is not. This is because what actions the students took and how they sought refuge from an earthquake or tsunami have not been fully recognized. The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze students' refuge behavior in the Great East Japan Earthquake and to predict the refuge behavior of students affected by future disasters. The results of the study showed that students passively acquired information about earthquakes and tsunamis and that their refuge behavior was highly dependent on adults. Immediately after an earthquake, people tended to protect themselves and stay in place until the shaking stopped. However, they tended to move to another place after the shaking occurred frequently. Students living on ria coastlines were likely to move to high places to escape the threat of earthquakes and tsunamis, whereas students living in plain regions were likely to move vertically to tall buildings, such as schools. As for the mode of movement to refugee shelters, the students arrived at the final refugee shelters in one move, and it is assumed that the refugee shelters should be decided in advance and the students should move there.

Growth environment characteristics of the habitat of Epilobium hirsutum L., a class II endangered wildlife species

  • Kwang Jin Cho;Hyeong Cheol Lee;Sang Uk Han;Hae Seon Shin;Pyoung Beom Kim
    • Journal of Ecology and Environment
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    • v.47 no.4
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    • pp.282-289
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    • 2023
  • Background: As wildlife habitats are being destroyed and growth environments are changing, the survival of animals and plants is under threat. Epilobium hirsutum L., a species that inhabits wetlands, has held legally protected status since 2012. However, no specific measures are currently in place to protect its habitat, leading to a decline in remaining populations as a result of land use change and human activities. Results: The growth environment (including location, climate, land use, soil, and vegetation) of the five habitat sites (Samcheok, Taebaek1, Taebaek2, Cheongsong, Ulleung) of E. hirsutum L. was investigated and analyzed. These habitats were predominantly situated in flat areas with gentle south-facing slopes, at an average altitude of 452.7 m (8-726 m) above sea level in Gangwon-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do. The average annual temperature ranged 11.5℃ (9.2℃-12.9℃), whereas the average annual precipitation ranged 1,304.5 mm (1,062.7-1,590.7 mm). The surrounding land use status was mainly characterized by mountainous areas, and human interference, such as agricultural land and roads, was commonly found in proximity to these natural habitats. Soil physicochemical analysis revealed that the soil was predominantly sandy loam with a slightly high sand content. The average pH measured 7.64, indicating an alkaline environment, and electrical conductivity (EC) averaged 0.33 dS/m. Organic matter (OM) content averaged 66.44 g/kg, available phosphoric acid (P2O5) content averaged 115.73 mg/kg, and cation exchange capacity (CEC) averaged 23.43 cmolc/kg. The exchangeable cations ranged 0.09-0.43 cmol+/kg for potassium (K), 10.23-16.21 cmol+/kg for calcium (Ca), 0.67-4.94 cmol+/kg for magnesium (Mg), and 0.05-0.74 cmol+/kg for sodium (Na). The vegetation type was categorized as E. hirsutum community with high numbers of E. hirsutum L., Persicaria thunbergii (Siebold & Zucc.) H. Gross, Phragmites japonica Steud., Humulus japonicus (Siebold & Zucc.), and Bidens frondosa L.. An ecological flora analysis, including the proportion of lianas, naturalized plants, and annual herbaceous plants, revealed that the native habitat of E. hirsutum L. was ecologically unstable. Conclusions: Analysis of the habitat of E. hirsutum L., a class II endangered wildlife species, provided essential data for local conservation and restoration efforts.