• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.18-18
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• 2012

In Japan, about 67% of the land is covered by forests and about 41% of them consist of plantations. About 35% of the plantations consist of old-aged plantations of older than 50 yearsand the percentage is projected to 67% in ten years' time. Although the trees of these plantations are supposed to be cut for timber production, most of them remain unmanaged and thus overcrowded mainly due to declining domestic forest industry. Since the forests are mostly located in headwater watershed, there are growing concerns about the degradation of water resources by these unmanaged plantations. To understand the ecohydrological processes in these plantations and examine the effect of intensive 50-60 % thinning to increase infiltration rate and reduce overland flow and soil erosion by recovering understory vegetation, the JST-CREST project "Development of Innovative Technologies for Increasing in Watershed Runoff and Improving River Environment by the Management Practice of Devastated Forest Plantation (Representative: Yuichi Onda)" has been launched since 2009. The ultimate objective of this project is to provide potential scenario to enhance low flow discharge in drought period and reduce turbid material in high flow period. We have been conductingintensive field observation campaign in five research sites across Japan. In Fukuoka site, integrated ecohydrological observations have been conductedin two contrastive watersheds since 2010. Intensive 50% thinning was conducted from January to April 2012 and comparative studies of ecohydrological processes before and after thinning have been started. The interim results from all the sites of this project will be presented in the 3rd International Congress for Forest and Water in a Changing Environment held in Fukuoka during 18-20 September, 2012 (http://www.forest.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~ecohydrol/3ForestWater/index.html).

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.190-196
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• 2005

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is uncommon in developed countries, yet is common in underdeveloped and developing countries. Infection rate of H. pylori is minimally influenced by economic, environmental, and public health status and genetic factors. Korea is a developing country with a high incidence of H. pylori infection and gastric carcinoma, which is one of the leading causes of death. For this reason, accurate clinical and pathologic data on H. pylori-associated disease are very important. Intestinal metaplasia accompanies chronic gastritis and increases the risk of gastric carcinoma. For this reason, the relationship between H. pylori infection and intestinal metaplasia is very closely linked. Because of this, as the antecedent condition is guessed, it examines the relationship of the H. pylori and the intestinal metaplasia. Intestinal metaplasia is thought to be the basis in the development of intestinal type gastric carcinomas. Recent investigations showed that inflammatory reaction in the gastric fundus affect the development of gastric carcinogenesis. To verify neutrophilic activity in the gastric fundus and development of intestinal metaplasia in both gastric fundus and antral mucosa, their relationship was studied using 159 healthy patients who had undergone gastric endoscopic biopsies without any identifiable pathologic disesaes. When neutrophilic activity accompanied, incidence of intestinal metaplasia was significantly increased (p<0.05). H. pylori infection was statistically and significantly associated with the presence of intestinal metaplasia (p<0.05). These results suggest that H. pylori infection affected the development of intestinal metaplasia in the stomach. These results will help our understanding of H. pylori infection in the pathogenesis of intestinal metaplasia, a preneoplastic condition of the stomach. To reduce the incidence of gastric adenocarcinoma, eradication treatment of H. pylori is recommended when there's a neutrophilic activity in the gastric fundus.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.202-202
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• 2016

Despite the potentially major influence of rainstorm patterns on the prediction of shallow landslides, this relationship has not yet received significant attention. In this study, five typical temporal rainstorm patterns with the same cumulative amount and intensity components comprising Advanced (A1 and A2), Centralized (C), and Delayed (D1 and D2) were designed based on a historical rainstorm event occurred in 2006 in Mt. Jinbu area. The patterns were incorporated as the hydrological conditions into the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope-stability Model (TRIGRS), in order to assess their influences on pore pressure variation and changes in the stability of the covering soil layer in the study area. The results revealed that not only the cumulative rainfall thresholds necessary to initiate landslides, but also the rate at which the factor of safety (FS) decreases and the time required to reach the critical state, are governed by rainstorm pattern. The sooner the peak rainfall intensity occurs, the smaller the cumulative rainfall threshold, and the shorter the time until landslide occurrence. Left-skewed rainfall patterns were found to have a greater effect on landslide initiation. More specifically, among the five different patterns, the Advanced storm pattern (A1) produced the most critical state, as it resulted in the highest pore pressure across the entire area for the shortest duration; the severity of response was then followed by patterns A2, C, D1, and D2. Thus, it can be concluded that rainfall patterns have a significant effect on the cumulative rainfall threshold, the build-up of pore pressure, and the occurrence of shallow landslides, both in space and time.

• Composites Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.161-174
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• 2022

SiC fiber-reinforced SiC matrix composite is a promising accident-tolerant fuel cladding material to improve the safety of light water nuclear reactors. Compared to the current zirconium alloy fuel cladding as well as metallic accident-tolerant fuel cladding, SiC composite fuel cladding has exceptional accident-tolerance such as excellent structural integrity and extremely low corrosion rate during severe accident of light water nuclear reactors, which reduces reactor core temperature and delays core degradation processes. In this paper, we introduce the concept, technical issues, and properties of SiC composite accident-tolerant fuel cladding during operation and accident scenarios of light water nuclear reactors.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.39-47
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• 2022

Background: This was a randomized controlled clinical trial that aimed to evaluate the anesthetic efficacy of 2% lidocaine combined with different concentrations of epinephrine (plain, 1:200,000 and 1:80,000) during endodontic treatment of maxillary molars with symptomatic irreversible pulpitis. Methods: The trial included 144 adult patients who were randomly allocated to three treatment groups. All patients received buccal-plus-palatal infiltration. After 10 min, pulp sensibility testing was performed using an electric pulp test (EPT). If a tooth responded positively, anesthesia was considered to have failed. In the case of a negative EPT response, endodontic access was initiated under rubber dam isolation. The success of anesthesia was defined as having a pain score less than 55 on the Heft Parker visual analog scale (HP VAS), which was categorized as 'no pain' or 'faint/weak/mild' pain on the HP VAS. Baseline pre-injection and post-injection maximum heart rates were recorded. The Pearson chi-square test was used to analyze the anesthetic success rates at 5% significance. Results: Plain 2% lidocaine and 2% lidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine and 1:80,000 epinephrine had anesthetic success rates of 18.75%, 72.9%, and 82.3%, respectively. Statistical analysis indicated significant differences between the groups (P < 0.001, 𝛘² = 47.5, df = 2). The maximum heart rate increase was seen with 2% lidocaine solution with epinephrine. Conclusion: Adding epinephrine to 2% lidocaine significantly improves its anesthetic success rates during the root canal treatment of maxillary molars with symptomatic irreversible pulpitis.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.418-426
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• 2022

Chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy is one of the promising anticancer treatments. It shows a high overall response rate with complete response to blood cancer. However, there is a limitation to solid tumor treatment. Additionally, this currently approved therapy exhibits side effects such as cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity. Alternatively, bispecific antibody is an innovative therapeutic tool that simultaneously engages specific immune cells to disease-related target cells. Since programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is an immune checkpoint molecule highly expressed in some cancer cells, in the current study, we generated αCD3xαPD-L1 bispecific antibody (BiTE) which can engage T cells to PD-L1⁺ cancer cells. We observed that the BiTE-bound OT-1 T cells effectively killed cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. They substantially increased the recruitment of effector memory CD8⁺ T cells having CD8⁺CD44⁺CD62L^low phenotype in tumor. Interestingly, we also observed that BiTE-bound polyclonal T cells showed highly efficacious tumor killing activity in vivo in comparison with the direct intravenous treatment of bispecific antibody, suggesting that PD-L1-directed migration and engagement of activated T cells might increase cancer cell killing. Additionally, BiTE-bound CAR-T cells which targets human Her-2/neu exhibited enhanced killing effect on Her-2-expressing cancer cells in vivo, suggesting that this could be a novel therapeutic regimen. Collectively, our results suggested that engaging activated T cells with cancer cells using αCD3xαPD-L1 BiTE could be an innovative next generation anticancer therapy which exerts simultaneous inhibitory functions on PD-L1 as well as increasing the infiltration of activated T cells having effector memory phenotype in tumor site.

• The Korea Journal of Herbology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.73-78
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• 2009

Objectives : In this study, we studied the effect of Pinellia Ternata (PT) on regulatory T cells and CD3+CCR3+ Th2 cells number in asthma model mice. Methods : All mice were immunized on two different days (21 days and 7 days before inhalational exposure) by i.p. injections of 0.2 $m\ell$ alum-precipitated Ag containing 100 ${\mu}g$ of OVA bound to 4 mg of aluminum hydroxide in PBS. Seven days after the second sensitization, mice were exposed to aerosolized ovalbumin for 30 min/day on 3 days/week for 12 weeks(at a flow rate of 250 L/min, 2.5％ ovalbumin in normal saline) and PT (400, 200 mg/kg) were orally administered 3 times a week for 8 weeks. After C57BL/6 mice were orally given of PT, the percentages, cell numbers, phenotype and function of CD4+CD25+Treg cells were determined by flow cytometry. Results : The cell numbers of CD4+CD25+Treg cell subsets were markedly increased in PT treated mice as reported. However, PT significantly reduced the CD3+CCR3+ Th2 cells in PBMC and lung of mice. Conclusions : These results indicate that PT has a deep inhibitory effect on asthma model mice by increase the number of regulatory T cells, and by reducing CD3+CCR3+ Th2 cells.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1164-1177
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• 2024

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is among the most common malignant tumors of the digestive tract, with the sixth highest fatality rate worldwide. The ESCC-related dataset, GSE20347, was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and weighted gene co-expression network analysis was performed to identify genes that are highly correlated with ESCC. A total of 91 transcriptome expression profiles and their corresponding clinical information were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. A mitochondria-associated risk (MAR) model was constructed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression analysis and validated using GSE161533. The tumor microenvironment and drug sensitivity were explored using the MAR model. Finally, in vitro experiments were performed to analyze the effects of hub genes on the proliferation and invasion abilities of ESCC cells. To confirm the predictive ability of the MAR model, we constructed a prognostic model and assessed its predictive accuracy. The MAR model revealed substantial differences in immune infiltration and tumor microenvironment characteristics between high- and low-risk populations and a substantial correlation between the risk scores and some common immunological checkpoints. AZD1332 and AZD7762 were more effective for patients in the low-risk group, whereas Entinostat, Nilotinib, Ruxolutinib, and Wnt.c59 were more effective for patients in the high-risk group. Knockdown of TYMS significantly inhibited the proliferation and invasive ability of ESCC cells in vitro. Overall, our MAR model provides stable and reliable results and may be used as a prognostic biomarker for personalized treatment of patients with ESCC.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.704-710
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• 2012

The lower portion of sloping paddy fields normally contains excessive moisture and the higher water table caused by the inflow of ground water from the upper part of the field resulting in non-uniform water content distribution. Four drainage methods namely Open Ditch, Vinyl Barrier, Pipe Drainage and Tube Bundle for multiple land use were installed within 1-m position from the lower edge of the upper embankment of sloping alluvial paddy fields. This study was conducted to evaluate soil physical characteristics by drainage improvement in poorly drained sloping paddy field. The results showed that subsurface drainage by Pipe Drainage improves the productivity of poorly drained soils by lowering the water table and improving root zone soil layer condition. In an Pipe drainage plot, soil moisture drained faster as compared to the other drainage methods. Infiltration rate showed high tendency to Piper Drainage method about $20.87mm\;hr^{-1}$ than in Open Ditch method $0.15mm\;hr^{-1}$. And Similarly soil water and degree of hardness and shear strength phase of soil profile showed a tendency to decrease. From the above results, we found that when an subsurface drainage was established with at 1m position from the lower edge paddy levee of the upper field in sloping poorly drained paddy fields Pipe Drainage was the most effective drainage system for multiple land use.

• Asian Journal of Turfgrass Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.149-163
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• 2004

Physical and chemical properties of root zone mixes and methods of green construction are important considerations for improving turf grass quality for putting greens. This study compared Penncross creeping bentgrass (Agrostis palustris Huds.) performance as affected by three root zone construction systems with three amendments (sand, peat, and zeolite). The objective of this study was to determine if an amended California construction system would improve green performance during establishment (1998-1999) and maturation (2000-2001). Three treatments were tested: California ($100\%$ sand), USGA($90\%$ sand and $10\%$ peat, v/v), and California-Z ($85\%$ sand and $15\%$ zeolite, v/v). Treatments were arranged in a randomized complete block with four replicates. Physical and chemical properties of the root zone and bentgrass performance were compared for the treatments. The California-Z treatment had the highest saturated hydraulic conductivity, field infiltration rate and the lowest bulk density. It also had the highest cation exchange capacity and plant available nutrient concentrations among the three treatments. The California-Z treatment produced bentgrass quality and color during green establishment and maturation that were equal to or higher than the California treatment, and consistently higher than the USGA treatment. The addition of an inorganic amendment to the California system improved physical and chemical properties of the root zone and improved quality and color of bentgrass during green establishment. During green maturation, creeping bentgrass in the California-Z treatment was equal (6 of 15 sampling dates) or $20\%$ higher (9 of 15 dates) in quality compared to the California system.