• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.501-509
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• 2022

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder. Suppression of MAPKs and NF-κB is implicated as a vital mechanism of action of several traditional Chinese medicines for AD therapy. Although overexpression of MAPK mRNA in the skin tissue has been shown in the AD model, the roles of each MAPK in AD pathogenesis have rarely been studied. This study examined the effect of NJK14047, an inhibitor of p38 MAPKs, on AD-like skin lesions induced in BALB/c mice by sensitization and challenges with 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) on dorsal skin and ears, respectively. After induction of AD, NJK14047 (2.5 mg/kg) or dexamethasone (10 mg/kg) was administrated for 3 weeks via intraperitoneal injection. Following its administration, NJK14047 suppressed CDNB-induced AD-like symptoms such as skin hypertrophy and suppressed mast cell infiltration into the skin lesions. It also reduced CDNB-induced increase in T_H2 cytokine (IL-13) and T_H1 cytokines (interferon-γ and IL-12A) levels but did not decrease serum IgE level. Furthermore, NJK14047 blocked CDNB-induced lymph node enlargement. These results suggest that NJK14047, a p38 MAPK inhibitor, might be an optimal therapeutic option with unique modes of action for AD treatment.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.75-85
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• 2021

The broadband noise can be dominant or important for total characteristics for marine propeller noise representing the minimum base of self-noise. Accurate prediction of such noise is crucial for survivability of underwater military vessels. While the FW-H Formulation 1B can be used to predict broadband trailing edge noise, the method required experiment measurements of surface pressure correlations, showing its limitations in generality. Therefore, in this study, the methods are developed to utilize wall pressure spectrum models to overcome those limitations. Chase model is adopted to represent surface pressure along with the developed formulations to reproduce pressure statistics. Newly developed method is validated with the experiments of airfoils at different velocities. Thereafter, with its feasibility and generality, the procedure incorporating computational fluid dynamics is established and performed for a propeller behind submarine hull. The results are compared with the experiments conducted at Large Cavitation Tunnel, thus showing its usability and robustness.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.70-76
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• 2022

Recently, the demand for ultra-precision processing has increased owing to the increase in the demand for high-performance ultra-precision optical parts in the fields of information technology (IT), bio, healthcare, aerospace, and future automobiles. In this study, a performance improvement of a multi-stage pump was achieved by improving the pump casing structure rather than using the existing performance improvement method. To verify the performance improvement, the CFD analysis reliability of the existing pump, Pump A, was verified using the FLUENT app in the analysis software ANSYS, and the pump casing was improved through the verified CFD analysis of Pump B. Therefore, we want to analyze the performance improvement.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.88 no.1
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• pp.67-81
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• 2023

The reinforced concrete (RC) structures might need strengthening or upgradation due to adverse environmental conditions, design defects, modification requirements, and to prolong the expected lifespan. The RC beams have been efficiently strengthened using the near surface mounted (NSM) approach over the externally bonded reinforcing (EBR) system. In this study, the performance of RC beam elements strengthened with NSM-steel rebars was investigated using an experimental program and nonlinear finite element modeling (FEM). Nine medium-sized, rectangular cross-section RC beams total in number made up for the experimental evaluation. The beams strengthened with varying percentages of NSM reinforcement, and the number of grooves was assessed in four-point bending experiments up to failure. Based on the experimental evaluation, the load-displacement response, crack features, and failure modes of the strengthened beams were recorded and considered. According to the experimental findings, NSM steel greatly improved the flexural strength (up to about 84%) and stiffness of RC beams. The flexural response of the tested beams was simulated using a 3D non-linear finite element (FE) model. The findings of the experiments and the numerical analysis showed good agreement. The effect of the NSM groove and reinforcement on the structural response was then assessed parametrically.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.531-539
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• 2024

Sleep is one of the most essential physiological phenomena for maintaining health. Sleep disturbances, such as insomnia, are often accompanied by psychiatric or physical conditions such as impaired attention, anxiety, and stress. Medication used to treat insomnia have concerns about potential side effects with long-term use, so interest in the use of alternative medicine is increasing. In this study, we investigated the hypnotic effects of β-lapachone (β-Lap), a natural naphthoquinone compound, using pentobarbital-induced sleep test, immunohistochemistry, real-time PCR, and western blot in mice. Our results indicated that β-Lap exerts a significant hypnotic effect by showing a decrease in sleep onset latency and an increase in total sleep time in pentobarbital-induced sleep model. The results of c-Fos immunostaining showed that β-Lap decreased neuronal activity in the basal forebrain and lateral hypothalamus, which are wakefulness-promoting brain regions, while increasing in the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, a sleep-promoting region; all these effects were significantly abolished by 8-cyclopentyl-1,3-dipropylxanthine (DPCPX), an adenosine A₁ receptor (A₁R) antagonist. Western blot analysis showed that β-Lap increased extracellular signal-regulated kinase phosphorylation and nuclear factor-kappa B translocation from the cytoplasm to the nucleus; these effects were inhibited by DPCPX. Additionally, β-Lap increased the mRNA levels of A₁R. Taken together, these results suggest that β-Lap exerts hypnotic effects, potentially through A₁R.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_1
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• pp.763-774
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• 2020

Wind data forecasted from the numerical weather prediction (NWP) model is generally used as the first-guess of the target tracking process to obtain the atmospheric motion vectors(AMVs) because it increases tracking accuracy and reduce computational time. However, there is a contradiction that the NWP model used as the first-guess is used again as the reference in the AMVs verification process. To overcome this problem, model-independent first guesses are required. In this study, we propose the AMVs derivation from Lucas and Kanade optical flow method and then using it as the first guess. To retrieve AMVs, Himawari-8/AHI geostationary satellite level-1B data were used at 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC from August 19 to September 5, 2015. To evaluate the impact of applying the optical flow method on the AMV derivation, cross-validation has been conducted in three ways as follows. (1) Without the first-guess, (2) NWP (KMA/UM) forecasted wind as the first-guess, and (3) Optical flow method based wind as the first-guess. As the results of verification using ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis data, the highest precision (RMSVD: 5.296-5.804 ms^-1) was obtained using optical flow based winds as the first-guess. In addition, the computation speed for AMVs derivation was the slowest without the first-guess test, but the other two had similar performance. Thus, applying the optical flow method in the target tracking process of AMVs algorithm, this study showed that the optical flow method is very effective as a first guess for model-independent AMVs derivation.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.523-532
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• 2007

This study utilized the 1/25,000 topographic map of the upper area from the Geum-ho watermark located at the middle of Geum-ho river from the National Geographic Information Institute. For the analysis, first, the influence of the size of critical area to the hydro topographic factors was examined changing grid size to $10m{\times}10m,\;30m{\times}30m\;and\;50m{\times}50m$, and the critical area for the formation of a river to $0.01km^2{\sim}0.50km^2$. It is known from the examination result of watershed morphology according to the grid size that the smaller grid size, the better resolution and accuracy. And it is found, from the analysis result of the degree of the river according to the minimum critical area for each grid size, that the grid size does not affect on the degree of the river, and the number of rivers with 2nd and higher degree does not show remarkable difference while there is big difference in the number of 1st degree rivers. From the results above, it is thought that the critical area of $0.15km^2{\sim}0.20km^2$ is appropriate for formation of a river being irrelevant to the grid size in extraction of hydro topographic parameters that are used in the runoff analysis model using topographic maps. Therefore, the GIUH model applied analysis results by use of the river level difference law proposed in this study for the explanation on the outflow response-changing characters according to the decision of a critical value of a minimum level difference river, showed that, since an ogival occurrence time and an ogival flow volume are very significant in a flood occurrence in case of not undertow facilities, the researcher could obtain a good result for the forecast of river outflow when considering a convenient application of the model and an easy acquisition of data, so it's judged that this model is proper as an algorism for the decision of a critical value of a river basin.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.276-282
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• 2013

The reclaimed water has been highlighted as a representative alternative to solve the lacking water resources. This study examined the reduction of residual free chlorine by temperature (5, 15, $25^{\circ}C$) and initial injection concentration (1, 2, 4, 6 mg/L) in the reclaimed water and carried out propose on the calculating method of the optimal chlorine dosage. As the reclaimed water showed a very fast reaction with chlorine at the intial time comparing to that of drinking water, the existing general first-order decay model ($C_t=C_o(e^{-k_bt})$) was not suitable for use. Accordingly, the reduction of residual free chlorine could be estimated in a more accurate way as a result of applying the exponential first-order decay model ($C_t=a+b(e^{-k_bt})$). ($r^2$=0.872~0.988). As a result of calculating the bulk decay constant, it showed the highest result at 653 $day^{-1}$ under the condition of 1 mg/L, $25^{\circ}C$ for the initial injection whereas it showed the lowest result at 3.42 $day^{-1}$ under the condition of 6 mg/L, $5^{\circ}C$ for the initial injection. The bulk decay constant tends to increase as temperature increases, whereas the bulk decay constant tends to decrease as the initial injection concentration increases. More accurate calculation for optimal chlorine dosage could be done by using the experimental results for 30~5,040 min, after the entire response time is classified into 0~30 min and 30~5,040 min to calculate the optimal chlorine dosage. In addition, as a result of calculating the optimal chlorine dosage by temperature, the relationships of initial chlorine demand (y) by temperature (x) could be obtained such as y=1.409+0.450x to maintain 0.2 mg/L of residual free chlorine at the time after 4 hours from the chlorine injection.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.145-159
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• 2014

This study is to evaluate the future climate change impact on turbidity water and eutrophication for Chungju Lake by using CE-QUAL-W2 reservoir water quality model coupled with SWAT watershed model. The SWAT was calibrated and validated using 11 years (2000~2010) daily streamflow data at three locations and monthly stream water quality data at two locations. The CE-QUAL-W2 was calibrated and validated for 2 years (2008 and 2010) water temperature, suspended solid, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and Chl-a. For the future assessment, the SWAT results were used as boundary conditions for CE-QUAL-W2 model run. To evaluate the future water quality variation in reservoir, the climate data predicted by MM5 RCM(Regional Climate Model) of Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B for three periods (2013~2040, 2041~2070 and 2071~2100) were downscaled by Artificial Neural Networks method to consider Typhoon effect. The RCM temperature and precipitation outputs and historical records were used to generate pollutants loading from the watershed. By the future temperature increase, the lake water temperature showed $0.5^{\circ}C$ increase in shallow depth while $-0.9^{\circ}C$ in deep depth. The future annual maximum sediment concentration into the lake from the watershed showed 17% increase in wet years. The future lake residence time above 10 mg/L suspended solids (SS) showed increases of 6 and 17 days in wet and dry years respectively comparing with normal year. The SS occupying rate of the lake also showed increases of 24% and 26% in both wet and dry year respectively. In summary, the future lake turbidity showed longer lasting with high concentration comparing with present behavior. Under the future lake environment by the watershed and within lake, the future maximum Chl-a concentration showed increases of 19 % in wet year and 3% in dry year respectively.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.24-35
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• 2024

Recently, research using deep learning technologies such as artificial intelligence, convolutional neural networks, etc. has been actively conducted in various fields including healthcare, manufacturing, autonomous driving, and security, and is having a significant influence on society. In line with this trend, the present study attempted to apply deep learning to the classification of archaeological artifacts, specifically ancient Korean roof-end tiles. Using 100 images of roof-end tiles from each of the Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla dynasties, for a total of 300 base images, a dataset was formed and expanded to 1,200 images using data augmentation techniques. After building a model using transfer learning from the pre-trained EfficientNetB0 model and conducting five-fold cross-validation, an average training accuracy of 98.06% and validation accuracy of 97.08% were achieved. Furthermore, when model performance was evaluated with a test dataset of 240 images, it could classify the roof-end tile images from the three dynasties with a minimum accuracy of 91%. In particular, with a learning rate of 0.0001, the model exhibited the highest performance, with accuracy of 92.92%, precision of 92.96%, recall of 92.92%, and F1 score of 92.93%. This optimal result was obtained by preventing overfitting and underfitting issues using various learning rate settings and finding the optimal hyperparameters. The study's findings confirm the potential for applying deep learning technologies to the classification of Korean archaeological materials, which is significant. Additionally, it was confirmed that the existing ImageNet dataset and parameters could be positively applied to the analysis of archaeological data. This approach could lead to the creation of various models for future archaeological database accumulation, the use of artifacts in museums, and classification and organization of artifacts.