• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.137-143
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• 2014

Dental professionals are repeatedly exposed to many microorganisms present in both blood and saliva. Thus, dental professionals are at a greater risk of acquiring and spreading infections, and the implementation of infections control guidelines is necessary. Cellular phones have become a necessary device for communicating in hospitals. Cellular phones contaminated with bacteria may serve as a fomite in the transmission of pathogens by the hands of medical personnel. Nevertheless, studies about rate and levels of bacterial contamination of cellular phones have been extremely limited with regards to dental personnel. The purpose of this study was to identify bacterial flora on the cellular phones of dentists by a molecular biological method using the 16S rRNA cloning and sequencing method. We acquired total 200 clones from dentists' cell phones and identified the bacterial species. Pseudomonas (34.6%), Lactobacillus (18.5%), Azomonas (11.5%), and Janthinobacterium (6%) were the dominant genera on dentists' cell phones. The oral bacteria identified were Anaerococcus lactolyticus, Gibbsiella dentisursi, Lactobacills leiae, Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus oligofermentans, and Streptococcus sanguinis. Pathogenic bacteria and opportunistic pathogens such as Carnobacterium funditum, Raoultella planticola, Shigella flexneri, Lactobacillus iners, Staphylococcus aureus, and Staphylococcus epidermidis were also identified.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.351-360
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• 2002

In the study presented here, identification, purification, and partial characterization of a hemin-regulated protein in Prevotella nigrescens were carried out. The results of this study confirm that the availability of hemin influences the expression of a selected membrane protein as well as the growth rate of P. nigrescens ATCC 33563. The 50 kDa cell envelope associated protein, whose expression is hemin regulated, is considered to be a putative hemin-binding protein from P. nigrescens. Disulfide bonds were not present in this protein, and N'-terminal amino acid sequence analysis revealed that this protein belongs to a new, so far undescribed protein. The 50 kDa protein was found to be rich in hydrophilic amino acids, with glycine comprising approximately 60% of the total amino acids. The study described here is the first to identify, purify, and biochemically characterize a putative hemin-binding protein from P. nigrescens. Work is in progress to further characterize the molecular structure of this protein.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.80 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2017

It is well established that health care workers (HCWs) have a considerably higher risk of occupationally acquired tuberculosis (TB). To reduce the transmission of TB to HCWs and patients, TB infection control programs should be implemented in health care settings. The first and most important level of all protection and control programs is administrative control. Its goals are to prevent HCWs, other staff, and patients from being exposed to TB, and to reduce the transmission of infection by ensuring rapid diagnosis and treatment of affected individuals. Administrative control measures recommended by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization include prompt identification of people with TB symptoms, isolation of infectious patients, control of the spread of the pathogen, and minimization of time spent in health care facilities. Another key component of measures undertaken is the baseline and serial screening for latent TB infection in HCWs who are at risk of exposure to TB. Although the interferon-gamma release assay has some advantages over the tuberculin skin test, the former has serious limitations, mostly due to its high conversion rate.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.65.1-65.1
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• 2013

Our understanding of how brown dwarfs form is limited by observational evidence. We report identification of a L328-IRS as a proto-brown dwarf embedded in an isolated dense molecular core. This source exhibits typical properties of a protostar, however, its luminosity (~0.05 $L{\odot}$) is far below than expected from the least massive protostar by the standard star formation theory. The most likely mass accretion rate (~2.4 10-7 $M{\odot}$ yr-1) inferred from its small bipolar outflow is an order of magnitude less than the canonical value for a protostar. The mass available in its envelope is less than 0.1 $M{\odot}$. These points suggest that L328-IRS will accrete the mass of a brown dwarf, but not that of a star. L328 is found to be fairly well isolated from other nearby clouds and seems to be forming three sub-cores simultaneously through a gravitational fragmentation process. Altogether with these, our direct detection of inward motions in L328 which harbors this proto-brown dwarf clearly supports the idea that a brown dwarf forms like a normal star.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2012

This paper presents an image processing-based validation method for unrecognizable numbers in severely distorted license plate images which have been degraded by various factors including low-resolution, low light-level, geometric distortion, and periodic noise. Existing vehicle license plate recognition (LPR) methods assume that most of the image degradation factors have been removed before performing the recognition of printed numbers and letters. If this is not the case, conventional LPR becomes impossible. The proposed method adopts a novel approach where a set of reference number images are intentionally degraded using the same factors estimated from the input image. After a series of image processing steps, including geometric transformation, super-resolution, and filtering, a comparison using cross-correlation between the intentionally degraded reference and the input images can provide a successful identification of the visually unrecognizable numbers. The proposed method makes it possible to validate numbers in a license plate image taken under low light-level conditions. In the experiment, using an extended set of test images that are unrecognizable to human vision, the proposed method provides a successful recognition rate of over 95%, whereas most existing LPR methods fail due to the severe distortion.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.5 no.7
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• pp.1274-1292
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• 2011

Due to the variety of household electric devices and different power consumption habits of consumers at present, general home energy management (HEM) systems suffer from the lack of dynamic identification of various household appliances and a unidirectional information display. This study presented a set of intelligent interconnection network systems for electric appliances, which can measure the power consumption of household appliances through a current sensing device based on OSGi platform. The system establishes the characteristics and categories of related electric appliances, and searches the corresponding cluster data and eliminates noise for recognition functionality and error detection mechanism of electric appliances by applying the clustering algorithm. The system also integrates household appliance control network services so as to control them according to users' power consumption plans or through mobile devices, thus realizing a bidirectional monitoring service. When the system detects an abnormal operating state, it can automatically shut off electric appliances to avoid accidents. In practical tests, the system reached a recognition rate of 95%, and could successfully control general household appliances through the ZigBee network.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-52
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• 1994

The importance of separation comes from demands on study for exact effect of synthetic drugs and the reactivity of enantiomer in biological system. Racemization rate was measured under the influence of heat, acid, UV-light, enzyme(trypsin) and 6N-HCl at $105^{\circ}C$ on alanine, threonine, isoleucine, lecuine, aspartic acid, methionine, glutamic acid, tyrosine. The method for the identification of overlapped amino acids with GC was developed from the close study of fragmentation pattern with mass spectrometry. With cyclodextrin bonded phase by HPLC, the separation of dansyl amino acid was tested for compartison.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2005.09a
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• pp.41-44
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• 2005

Cytokines play a crucial role in the immune and inflammatory responses. But because of the high evolutionary rate of these proteins, the similarity between different members of their family is very low, which makes the identification of novel members of cytokines very difficult. According to this point, a new bioinformatic strategy to identify novel cytokine of the short-chain and long-chain 4${\alpha}$ helix cytokine using hidden markov model (HMM) is proposed in the paper. As a result, two motifs were created on the two train data sets, which were used to search three different databases. In order to improve the result, a strict criterion is established to filter the novel cytokines in the subject proteins. Finally, according to their E-value, scores and the criterion, four subject proteins are predicted to be possible novel cytokines for each family respectively.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.332-342
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• 2014

Objectives: This study was investigated in order to analyse the characteristics of recent Chinese medicine treatment of gastric cancer, and provide literature basis for the development of effective therapy of gastric cancer by reviewing Chinese journals. Methods: The literature on Chinese medicine treatment of gastric cancer were collected, analyzed and summarized from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) from 2000 to 2013. Results: Physicians have not shown consistent opinion with the pattern identification of gastric cancer. Recently, traditional Chinese Medicine patent prescriptions have been much used in the treatment of gastric cancer, which is classified into the reinforcement of healthy qi and elimination of the pathogenic factors. Chinese medicine combined with western medicine can improve the immune system and quality of life, while reducing toxic side effects. Conclusions: Further studies on traditional Chinese Medicine are needed to increase the survival rate of gastric cancer and effectiveness of combination therapy with western medicine.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.233-252
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• 2010

Due to its capabilities, RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) has shown its applicability in various areas of business operations. This study describes the successful RFID system implemented in the auto parts manufacturing company called "E" to improve the efficiency of auto parts painting process management. The findings of this study show that an RFID system could help companies reduce manufacturing cost, inventory, and error rate in the auto-parts painting process. The RFID system descried in this study also demonstrates that an RFID system could make production data available real time to the company's ERP system and thus, managers and supervisors on the shop floor are able to make more informed business decisions. The findings of this study imply that RFID systems can be used to improve the efficiency of various manufacturing operations in companies. This study also provides IT professionals with practical guidelines for an effective implementation of RFID systems. In other words, it provides IT practitioners with the information on the success factors for implementing RFID systems as well as potential problems and solutions to them when implementing RFID systems.