• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.119-131
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• 2023

Objectives: Betula Platyphylla(BP) has been used as a analgesic, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant drug in Eastern Asia. However, it is still unknown whether BP ethanol extract could exhibit the inhibitory activities against ultraviolet B(UVB)-induced skin injury on human keratinocytes, HaCaT cells. This study was aimed to investigate the protective activity of BP ethanol extract on UVB-irradiated skin injury in HaCaT cells. Methods: The skin injury model of HaCaT cells was established under UVB stimulation. HaCaT keratinocyte cells were pre-treated with BP ethanol extract for 1 h, and then stimulated with UVB. Then, the cells were harvested to measure the cell viability, production of reactive oxygen species(ROS), pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin(IL) 1-beta, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor(TNF)-𝛼, hyaluronidase, type 1 collagen, matrix metalloproteinase(MMP)s. In addition, we examined the mitogen activated protein kinases(MAPKs) and inhibitory kappa B alpha(I𝜅;-B𝛼) as inhibitory mechanisms of BP ethanol extract. Results: The treatment of BP ethanol extract inhibited the UVBinduced cell death and ROS production in HaCaT cells. BP ethanol extract treatment inhibited the UVB-induced increase of IL-1beta, IL-6, and TNF-𝛼. BP ethanol extract treatment inhibited the increase of hyaluronidase, MMP and decrease of collagen. BP ethanol extract treatment inhibited the activation of MAPKs and the degradation of I𝜅-B𝛼. Conclusions: Our result suggest that treatment of BP ethanol extract could inhibit the UVB-induced skin injury via deactivation of MAPKs and nuclear factor kappa B(NF-𝜅B) in HaCaT cells. This study could suggest that BP ethanol extract could be a beneficial agent to prevent skin damage or inflammation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.316-330
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• 2008

During the past two decades or so, science (or scientific or scientific & technological) culture has become one of the main themes not only of policy makers but also of science educators. Although, the idea of science culture has been taken as a desirable goal, there is little agreement about what it means and how to measure it. Particularly in Korea, there has been a rapid growth of science culture projects and programs, either by governmental or non-governmental, but with little systemic monitoring and evaluation for its practice. The purpose of this study is, thus, to explore a model of measuring science culture and develop a comprehensive indicator system for it. We reviewed many literatures on definitions of science culture and the surveys for related terms, particularly, of recent national and international surveys (e.g. US Science and Engineering Indicators, Eurobarometer, Japanese Science and Technology Indicators). Based on this review, a model for science culture is proposed and then used to define the Science Culture Indicators (SCI). This model encompasses two dimensions(i.e. individual and social), which are further divided into two aspects (i.e. potential and practice). Each dimension is expected to represent citizen literacy of and national infrastructure of science culture respectively. Each category in this $2{\times}2$ matrix is further divided into several sub-categories. The discussion concerning how the model and the indicators can be used to check the states of science culture at social as well as individual levels will be given with some concrete examples, such as indicators particularly related to science education.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.39-50
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• 2024

Color is an essential visual element that has a significant impact on the formation of a city's image and people's perceptions. Quantitative analysis of color in urban environments is a complex process that has been difficult to implement in the past. However, with recent rapid advances in Machine Learning, it has become possible to analyze city colors using photos shared by tourists. This study selected Dali City, a popular tourist destination in China, as a case study. Photos of Dali City shared by tourists were collected, and a method to measure large-scale city colors was explored by combining machine learning techniques. Specifically, the DeepLabv3+ model was first applied to perform a semantic segmentation of tourist sharing photos based on the ADE20k dataset, thereby separating artificial elements in the photos. Next, the K-means clustering algorithm was used to extract colors from the artificial elements in Dali City, and an adjacency matrix was constructed to analyze the correlations between the dominant colors. The research results indicate that the main color of the artificial elements in Dali City has the highest percentage of orange-grey. Furthermore, gray tones are often used in combination with other colors. The results indicated that local ethnic and Buddhist cultures influence the color characteristics of artificial elements in Dali City. This research provides a new method of color analysis, and the results not only help Dali City to shape an urban color image that meets the expectations of tourists but also provide reference materials for future urban color planning in Dali City.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.230-240
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• 2015

An IOM sampler equipped with glass fiber filter has been recently utilized instead of solid adsorbent, which was used to measure the inhalation exposure of agricultural operator to pesticides. The aim of this study is to validate the efficacy of an IOM sampler by measuring the trapping efficiency and breakthrough using kresoxim-methyl water-dispersible granule and fenthion emulsifiable concentrate. On LC-MS/ MS, minimum detection level was 12.5 pg and method limit of detection was 5.0 ng/mL. Good linearity ($R^2$ > 0.999) for matrix matched standards was obtained. Recoveries of pesticides from glass fiber filter were 102-109% (kresoxim-methyl) and 97-104% (fenthion) while those from XAD-2 resin were 94-98% (kresoxim methyl) and 93-100% (fenthion). Trapping efficiency test was performed with personal air pumps and IOM sampler (glass fiber filter) connected with solid adsorbent (XAD-2 resin) with two types of formulation (solid and liquid) which were diluted by standard rate and sprayed to IOM sampler. Those pesticides were trapped only in glass fiber filter without any breakthrough to solid adsorbent. After spiking of pesticides to glass fiber filter, breakthrough test was carried out with IOM sampler (glass fiber filter) which was connected with solid adsorbent. As a results, 87-101% of kresoxim-methyl and 96-105% of fenthion remained in spiked glass fiber filter, however, no pesticides were detected in second glass fiber filter and solid adsorbent. In conclusion, IOM sampler which equipped with glass fiber filter can be applied widely for pesticide inhalation exposure study since it has good trapping efficiency and adsorption capacity, regardless of the solid or liquid formulation.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.107-120
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• 2014

This study proposes a novel recommender system using the structural hole analysis to reflect qualitative and emotional information in recommendation process. Although collaborative filtering (CF) is known as the most popular recommendation algorithm, it has some limitations including scalability and sparsity problems. The scalability problem arises when the volume of users and items become quite large. It means that CF cannot scale up due to large computation time for finding neighbors from the user-item matrix as the number of users and items increases in real-world e-commerce sites. Sparsity is a common problem of most recommender systems due to the fact that users generally evaluate only a small portion of the whole items. In addition, the cold-start problem is the special case of the sparsity problem when users or items newly added to the system with no ratings at all. When the user's preference evaluation data is sparse, two users or items are unlikely to have common ratings, and finally, CF will predict ratings using a very limited number of similar users. Moreover, it may produces biased recommendations because similarity weights may be estimated using only a small portion of rating data. In this study, we suggest a novel limitation of the conventional CF. The limitation is that CF does not consider qualitative and emotional information about users in the recommendation process because it only utilizes user's preference scores of the user-item matrix. To address this novel limitation, this study proposes cluster-indexing CF model with the structural hole analysis for recommendations. In general, the structural hole means a location which connects two separate actors without any redundant connections in the network. The actor who occupies the structural hole can easily access to non-redundant, various and fresh information. Therefore, the actor who occupies the structural hole may be a important person in the focal network and he or she may be the representative person in the focal subgroup in the network. Thus, his or her characteristics may represent the general characteristics of the users in the focal subgroup. In this sense, we can distinguish friends and strangers of the focal user utilizing the structural hole analysis. This study uses the structural hole analysis to select structural holes in subgroups as an initial seeds for a cluster analysis. First, we gather data about users' preference ratings for items and their social network information. For gathering research data, we develop a data collection system. Then, we perform structural hole analysis and find structural holes of social network. Next, we use these structural holes as cluster centroids for the clustering algorithm. Finally, this study makes recommendations using CF within user's cluster, and compare the recommendation performances of comparative models. For implementing experiments of the proposed model, we composite the experimental results from two experiments. The first experiment is the structural hole analysis. For the first one, this study employs a software package for the analysis of social network data - UCINET version 6. The second one is for performing modified clustering, and CF using the result of the cluster analysis. We develop an experimental system using VBA (Visual Basic for Application) of Microsoft Excel 2007 for the second one. This study designs to analyzing clustering based on a novel similarity measure - Pearson correlation between user preference rating vectors for the modified clustering experiment. In addition, this study uses 'all-but-one' approach for the CF experiment. In order to validate the effectiveness of our proposed model, we apply three comparative types of CF models to the same dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the other comparative models. In especial, the proposed model significantly performs better than two comparative modes with the cluster analysis from the statistical significance test. However, the difference between the proposed model and the naive model does not have statistical significance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.631-640
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• 2014

The inhibitory effects of Boswellia serrata (BW) extracts on degenerative osteoarthritis were investigated in primary-cultured rat cartilage cells and a monosodium-iodoacetate (MIA)-induced osteoarthritis rat model. To identify the protective effects of BW extract against $H_2O_2$ ($800{\mu}M$, 2 hr) in vitro, cell survival was measured by MTT assay. Cell survival after $H_2O_2$ treatment was elevated by BW extract at a concentration of $20{\mu}g/mL$. In addition, BW extract treatment significantly reduced and normalized the productions of pro-inflammatory factors, nuclear transcription factor ${\kappa}B$, cyclooxygenase-2, tumor necrosis factor-${\alpha}$, and interleukin-6 at a concentration of $20{\mu}g/mL$. Treatment of chondrocytes with BW extract significantly reduced 5-lipoxygenase activity and production of prostaglandin E2, especially at a concentration of $10{\sim}20{\mu}g/mL$. For the in vivo animal study, osteoarthritis was induced by intra-articular injection of MIA into knee joints of rats. Consumption of a diet containing BW extract (100 and 200 mg/kg) for 35 days significantly inhibited the development and severity of osteoarthritis in rats. To determine the genetic expression of arthritic factors in articular cartilage, real-time PCR was applied to measure matrix metalloproteinases (MMP-3, MMP-9, and MMP-13), collagen type I, collagen type II, and aggrecan, and BW extract had protective effects at a concentration of 200 mg/kg. In conclusion, BW extract was able to inhibit articular cartilage degeneration by preventing extracellular matrix degradation and chondrocyte injury. One can consider that BW extract may be a potential therapeutic treatment for degenerative osteoarthritis.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.583-594
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• 2000

The Middle Carboniferous Yobong Formation with North-South trending is distributed in the Yeongheungri and Samokri of Yeongwoleup, Kangwon Province, Korea. A light gray thick and massive pure limestone is developed in the middle part of the Yobong Formation and it has been exploited for a long time. This study was carried out to investigate the lithological characteristics and geochemical compositions of the limestones and to figure out how geologic structures control the disribution of the limestones of the formation. The limestones of the Yobong formation are characterized by the fine and dense textures and the light gray to light brown in color. The limestones are composed of crinoid fragments, small foraminifers, fusulinids, gastropods, ostracods, etc. Based on the amount of grains and matrix, the Yobong Limestone can be classified as fine packstones and wackestones. The chemical analysis of limestones of the Yobong Formation was carried out to measure the contents of CaO, MgO, Al$_2$O$_3$, Fe$_2$O$_3$ and SiO$_2$. The content of CaO ranges from 48.12 to 59.31% and its average is about 54.52%. The average content of MgO is about 0.32% and the coutents of Al$_2$O$_3$, Fe$_2$O$_3$ and SiO$_2$ are relatively low. The amounts of Al$_2$O$_3$, Fe$_2$O$_3$ and SiO$_2$ of the limestones vary according to the kinds of limestone and their stratigraphical horizons in the formation. Generally, the CaO content of the limestones of the Yobong Formation decreases towards the top of the formation. Using geometric and structural analysis, we determined five progressively overprinted phases of deformation recorded in the study area. The anticline and syncline formed during the first and fourth deformation had controlled the distribution pattern of the Yobong Limestone of the Yobong Formation. The structures of deformation D$_1$ consist of F$_1$ isoclinal folds and foliations. The D$_2$ deformation had formed the isoclinal interstratal F$_2$ folds and axial plane cleavages which are locally developed within mudstones. The structural elements of deformation D$_3$ are axial plane cleavages associated with recumbent F$_3$ folds. These structures are overprinted by meso-scale and regional F$_4$ folds which are regionally dominant. Finally, the structures of D$_5$ consist of the thrust faults and folds associated with the thrust faults.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.77-85
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• 2013

Purpose: The accurate movement of gantry rotation, collimator and correct application of dose rate are very important to approach the successful performance of Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT), because it is tightly interlocked with a complex treatment plan. The interruption and restart of dose delivery, however, are able to occur on treatment by various factors of a treatment machine and treatment plan. If unexpected problems of a treat machine or a patient interrupt the VMAT, the movement of treatment machine for delivering the remaining dose will be restarted at the start point. In this investigation, We would like to know the effect of interruptions and restart regarding dose delivery at VMAT. Materials and Methods: Treatment plans of 10 patients who had been treated at our center were used to measure and compare the dose distribution of each VMAT after converting to a form of digital image and communications in Medicine (DICOM) with treatment planning system (Eclipse V 10.0, Varian, USA). We selected the 6 MV photon energy of Trilogy (Varian, USA) and used OmniPro I'mRT system (V 1.7b, IBA dosimetry, Germany) to analyze the data that were acquired through this measurement with two types of interruptions four times for each case. The door interlock and the beam-off were used to stop and then to restart the dose delivery of VMAT. The gamma index in OmniPro I'mRT system and T-test in Microsoft Excel 2007 were used to evaluate the result of this investigation. Results: The deviations of average gamma index in cases with door interlock, beam-off and without interruption on VMAT are 0.141, 0.128 and 0.1. The standard deviations of acquired gamma values are 0.099, 0.091, 0.071 and The maximum gamma value in each case is 0.413, 0.379, 0.286, respectively. This analysis has a 95-percent confidence level and the P-value of T-test is under 0.05. Gamma pass rate (3%, 3 mm) is acceptable in all of measurements. Conclusion: As a result, We could make sure that the interruption of this investgation are not enough to seriously affect dose delivery of VMAT by analyzing the measured data. But this investigation did not reflect all cases about interruptions and errors regarding the movement of a gantry rotation, collimator and patient So, We should continuously maintain a treatment machine and program to deliver the accurate dose when we perform the VMAT for the many kinds of cancer patients.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.76-83
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• 2001

Background : Coal workers' pneumoconiosis is a fibrotic lung disease resulting from chronic inhalation of coal dust. The precise mechanism of lung fibrosis in coal workers' pneumoconiosis is uncertain. However, a relationship between the stimulation of fibroblast proliferation and collagen production by mediators released from in flammatory and resident lung cells is thought to be a major factor. The transforming growth factor-$\beta$(TGF-$\beta$), a multifunctional cytokine and growth factor, plays a key role in the scarring and fibrotic processes due to its ability to induce extracellular matrix proteins and modulate the growth and immune function of many cell types. To determine the involvement of TGF-$\beta$ in the development of lung fibrosis in coal workers' pneumoconiosis, the TGF-${\beta}_1$ level in plasma was measured in patients with coal workers' pneumoconiosis. Methods : Plasma was collected from 40 patients with coal workers' pneumoconiosis (20 with simple coal workers' pneumoconiosis and 20 with complicated coal workers' pneumoconiosis) and from 10 normal controls. The ELISA method was used to measure the plasma TGF-${\beta}_1$ concentration. Results : Compared to the control group ($0.63{\pm}01.8$ ng/mL), there was no significant difference in the plasma TGF-${\beta}_1$ level in patients with simple coal workers' pneumoconiosis ($0.64{\pm}0.17$ ng/mL) (p>0.05). However, in patients with complicated coal workers' pneumoconiosis the plasma TGF-${\beta}_1$ level ($0.79{\pm}0.18$ ng/mL) was significantly higher than in patients with simple coal workers' pneumoconiosis and the control group (p<0.05). Conclusion : The data suggests that TGF-${\beta}_1$ has some influence in the development of lung fibrosis in coal workers' pneumoconiosis.