• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.360-369
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• 1997

Food/nutrition related views, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors were investigated for three hundred randomly selected men and women, aged 20-60 years, residing in Seoul metropolitan area. Food/nutrition views, attitudes, and beliefs were found to vary greatly between groups of different age, sex, education and income level. Adults of 20-35 years of age showed significantly less strong views about keeping traditional food habits, while exhibiting a significantly high level of acceptance towards the use of convenience foods as compared to the adults aged 36 years or older. Food safety was found to be a major concern to most of the subjects accounting 69.7% for pesticides residues in fresh produce items, 94.7% for food additives in processed food, and 56.3% for food poisoning in foods eaten outside of the home. Male adults aged 45 years or older showed a strong tendency to rely on a few promotional food products for the maintenance of their health and for them the development and implementation of a sensible feed nutritin/health education program including a way to avoid nutrition quackery might be beneficial. Eighty percent of the subjects were found to read food labels with higher rates shown among young adults and females. Due to the virtual absence of nutrition labeling however, the percentage of subjects who idicated that they are looking for the information on nutrient content was low (<10%) compared to the rates for other informations such as date of manufacture(80.2%), expiration data(55.8%), ingredients(40.9), and additives(40.9%). Ninety one percent of the subjects indicated that they would like to see the sources for nutrition label the nutritional value of the foods. The top five most frequently (68.3%), food packages(50.7%), and radio(43.3%). Health professionals such as physicians, nurses, and nutritionists/dietitians were utilized less frequently as sources of nutrition information than lay sources, with reported rate of only 38%, 22%, and 0.7%, respectively. These results collectively suggest that strategies are to be developed to provide accurate nutrition information to adults.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.83-93
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a novel method that automatically generates real character images to familiarize existing OCR systems with new fonts. At first, we generate synthetic character images using a simple degradation model. The synthetic data is used to train an OCR engine, and the trained OCR is used to recognize and label real character images that are segmented from ideal document images. Since the OCR engine is unable to recognize accurately all real character images, a substring matching method is employed to fix wrongly labeled characters by comparing two strings; one is the string grouped by recognized characters in an ideal document image, and the other is the ordered string of characters which we are considering to train and recognize. Based on our method, we build a system that automatically generates 2350 most common Korean and 117 alphanumeric characters from new fonts. The ideal document images used in the system are postal envelope images with characters printed in ascending order of their codes. The proposed system achieved a labeling accuracy of 99%. Therefore, we believe that our system is effective in facilitating the generation of numerous character samples to enhance the recognition rate of existing OCR systems for fonts that have never been trained.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.559-568
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• 2008

Even though snacks or meals purchased by teenagers have dramatically increased in Korea, it has not been investigated whether teenagers know and take notice of the nutrition label. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the usefulness and utilization of food and nutrition labels amongst teenagers. Questionnaires were distributed 814 of junior-high school students and were completed by self-administrated questionnaires. Questionnaires included questions regarding general characteristics, perception and utilization of food and nutrition labels and degree of necessity and satisfaction on food products and nutrition labels. Data was analyzed with regards to sex and school year by using a SAS package program. Significant differences of each variable were tested by using the $x^2$-test, t-test and ANOVA. Only 4.4% of participants were well informed about food and nutrition labels, while 26.0% of them did not know about it. Most of participants(78%) perceived that food and nutrition labeling system is necessary but are not satisfied with it. More of them did not check the food and nutrition label when they purchased food. Students usually checked the food and nutrition label to know about the nutritional value, and additives. The survey showed that more than three quarters of participants take notice of the food and nutrition label on products whereas only 57.7% of them knew what the food and nutrition actually meant. This study showed that most teenagers did not know the food and nutrition label, didn't have right information and didn't use it. Therefore, it is necessary to include an educational program about the food and nutrition label in the school curriculum and that will help students use the nutrition label and help them choose healthy food.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1023-1035
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of colon cancer stem cells (CSCs) during chemically-induced rat multi-step colon carcinogenesis with or without the treatment with a specific cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor drug (celecoxib). Two experiments were performed, the first, a short term 12 week colon carcinogenesis bioassay in which only surrogate markers for colon cancer, aberrant crypt foci (ACF) lesions, were formed. The other experiment was a medium term colon cancer rat assay in which tumors had developed after 32 weeks. Treatment with celecoxib lowered the numbers of ACF, as well as the tumor volumes and multiplicities after 32 weeks. Immunohistochemical proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) labeling indexes LI (%) were downregulated after treatment by celecoxib. Also different cell surface antigens known to associate with CSCs such as the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), CD44 and CD133 were compared between the two experiments and showed differential expression patterns depending on the stage of carcinogenesis and treatment with celecoxib. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that the numbers of CD133 cells were increased in the colonic epithelium after 12 weeks while those of CD44 but not CD133 cells were increased after 32 weeks. Moreover, aldehyde dehydrogenase-1 activity levels in the colonic epithelium (a known CSC marker) detected by ELISA assay were found down-regulated after 12 weeks, but were up-regulated after 32 weeks. The data have also shown that the protective effect of celecoxib on these specific markers and populations of CSCs and on other molecular processes such as apoptosis targeted by this drug may vary depending on the genetic and phenotypic stages of carcinogenesis. Therefore, uncovering these distinction roles of CSCs during different phases of carcinogenesis and during specific treatment could be useful for targeted therapy.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.196-202
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• 2016

Background: Ginsenoside Rd (GSRd), a main component of the root of Panax ginseng, exhibits anti-inflammation functions and decreases infarct size in many injuries and ischemia diseases such as focal cerebral ischemia. M1 Macrophages are regarded as one of the key inflammatory cells having functions for disease progression. Methods: To investigate the effect of GSRd on renal ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI) and macrophage functional status, and their regulatory role on mouse polarized macrophages in vitro, GSRd (10-100 mg/kg) and vehicle were applied to mice 30 min before renal IRI modeling. Renal functions were reflected by blood serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen level and histopathological examination. M1 polarized macrophages infiltration was identified by flow cytometry analysis and immunofluorescence staining with $CD11b^+$, $iNOS^+$/interleukin-12/tumor necrosis factor-${\alpha}$ labeling. For the in vitro study, GSRd ($10-100{\mu}g/mL$) and vehicle were added in the culture medium of M1 macrophages to assess their regulatory function on polarization phenotype. Results: In vivo data showed a protective role of GSRd at 50 mg/kg on Day 3. Serum level of serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen significantly dropped compared with other groups. Reduced renal tissue damage and M1 macrophage infiltration showed on hematoxylin-eosin staining and flow cytometry and immunofluorescence staining confirmed this improvement. With GSRd administration, in vitro cultured M1 macrophages secreted less inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-12 and tumor necrosis factor-${\alpha}$. Furthermore, macrophage polarization-related pancake-like morphology gradually changed along with increasing concentration of GSRd in the medium. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that GSRd possess a protective function against renal ischemia/reperfusion injury via downregulating M1 macrophage polarization.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.4-10
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• 2000

The work presented in this paper is about a postprocessor, which improves the performance of automatic speech segmentation system by correcting the phoneme boundary errors. We propose a postprocessor that reduces the range of errors in the auto labeled results that are ready to be used directly as synthesis unit. Starting from a baseline automatic segmentation system, our proposed postprocessor trains the features of hand labeled results using multi-layer perceptron(MLP) algorithm. Then, the auto labeled result combined with MLP postprocessor determines the new phoneme boundary. The details are as following. First, we select the feature sets of speech, based on the acoustic phonetic knowledge. And then we have adopted the MLP as pattern classifier because of its excellent nonlinear discrimination capability. Moreover, it is easy for MLP to reflect fully the various types of acoustic features appearing at the phoneme boundaries within a short time. At the last procedure, an appropriate feature set analyzed about each phonetic event is applied to our proposed postprocessor to compensate the phoneme boundary error. For phonetically rich sentences data, we have achieved 19.9 % improvement for the frame accuracy, comparing with the performance of plain automatic labeling system. Also, we could reduce the absolute error rate about 28.6%.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.4 no.7
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• pp.283-290
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose a hybrid method for the recognition of answer types in the WiseQA system. The answer types are classified into two categories: the lexical answer type (LAT) and the semantic answer type (SAT). This paper proposes two models for the LAT detection. One is a rule-based model using question focuses. The other is a machine learning model based on sequence labeling. We also propose two models for the SAT classification. They are a machine learning model based on multiclass classification and a filtering-rule model based on the lexical answer type. The performance of the LAT detection and the SAT classification shows F1-score of 82.47% and precision of 77.13%, respectively. Compared with IBM Watson for the performance of the LAT, the precision is 1.0% lower and the recall is 7.4% higher.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.1-15
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• 2002

A noel automated brain region extraction method in single channel MR images for visualization and analysis of a human brain is presented. The method generates a volume of brain masks by automatic thresholding using a dual curve fitting technique and by 3D morphological operations. The dual curve fitting can reduce an error in clue fitting to the histogram of MR images. The 3D morphological operations, including erosion, labeling of connected-components, max-feature operation, and dilation, are applied to the cubic volume of masks reconstructed from the thresholded Drain masks. This method can automatically extract a brain region in any displayed type of sequences, including extreme slices, of SPGR, T1-, T2-, and PD-weighted MR image data sets which are not required to contain the entire brain. In the experiments, the algorithm was applied to 20 sets of MR images and showed over 0.97 of similarity index in comparison with manual drawing.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.316-328
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• 2012

Objectives: This study was designed to provide the information regarding chemicals classification and health hazard by evaluating the toxicological effect through repeated inhalation exposure of methyl acrylate(MA) in Sprague-Dawley(SD) rat for 13 weeks. Methods: According to the notification with Ministry of Labor(No. 2009-68) and OECD Test Guideline 413, the rats were exposed to MA at concentration of 0, 56, 168, 280 ppm via whole body inhalation for 6 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 13 weeks. All animals were observed for mortality, morbidity and the change of body weight and food consumption were determined during the exposure period. Necropsy finding, organ weight, hematology, clinical biochemistry and histopathological examination following exposure were also performed. Results: There were no death and abnormal clinical signs relate to exposure MA. However, At 160 ppm and 280 ppm exposure groups, body weight and food consumption showed statistically significant decrease and histopathological changes in lung, trachea, nasal cavity, larynx were observed. Conclusions: MA was mainly affected respiratory tract. It is consequently provided to be classified as category 2(0.2 mg/L/6h < category 2 ${\leq}$ 1.0 mg/L/6h) for specific target organ toxicity following repeated exposure according to Standard for Classification and Labeling of Chemical Substance and Material Safety Data Sheet. The NOAEL(no observable adverse effect level) of MA was also determined to be lower than 56 ppm.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.613-619
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• 2014

The optic nerve often suffers regenerative failure after injury, leading to serious visual impairment such as glaucoma. The main inhibitory factors, including Nogo-A, oligodendrocyte myelin glycoprotein, and myelin-associated glycoprotein, exert their inhibitory effects on axonal growth through the same receptor, the Nogo-66 receptor (NgR). Oncomodulin (OM), a calcium-binding protein with a molecular weight of an ~12 kDa, which is secreted from activated macrophages, has been demonstrated to have high and specific affinity for retinal ganglion cells (RGC) and promote greater axonal regeneration than other known polypeptide growth factors. Protamine has been reported to effectively deliver small interference RNA (siRNA) into cells. Accordingly, a fusion protein of OM and truncated protamine (tp) may be used as a vehicle for the delivery of NgR siRNA into RGC for gene therapy. To test this hypothesis, we constructed OM and tp fusion protein (OM/tp) expression vectors. Using the indirect immunofluorescence labeling method, OM/tp fusion proteins were found to have a high affinity for RGC. The gel shift assay showed that the OM/tp fusion proteins retained the capacity to bind to DNA. Using OM/tp fusion proteins as a delivery tool, the siRNA of NgR was effectively transfected into cells and significantly down-regulated NgR expression levels. More importantly, OM/tp-NgR siRNA dramatically promoted axonal growth of RGC compared with the application of OM/tp recombinant protein or NgR siRNA alone in vitro. In addition, OM/tp-NgR siRNA highly elevated intracellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) levels and inhibited activation of the Ras homolog gene family, member A (RhoA). Taken together, our data demonstrated that the recombinant OM/tp fusion proteins retained the functions of both OM and tp, and that OM/tp-NgR siRNA might potentially be used for the treatment of optic nerve injury.