• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1739-1743
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• 2014

MicroRNAs are a class of small noncoding RNA which play important regulatory roles in a variety of cancers. MiRNA-specific expression profiles have been reported for several pathological conditions. In this study, we combined large scale parallel Solexa sequencing to identify 11 up-regulated miRNAs and 19 down-regulated miRNAs with computational techniques in the sera of ovarian cancer patients while using healthy serum as the control. Among the above, four miRNAs (miR-22, miR-93, miR-106b, miR-451) were validated by quantitative RT-PCR and found to be significantly aberrantly expressed in the serum of ovarian cancer patients (P<0.05). There were no significant differences between samples from cancer stage I/II and III/IV. However, the levels of miR-106b (p=0.003) and miR-451 (p=0.007) were significantly different in those patients under and over 51 yearsof age. MiR-451 and miR-93 were also specific when analyzed with reference to different levels of CA125. This study shows that Solexa sequencing provides a promising method for cancer-related miRNA profiling, and selectively expressed miRNAs could be used as potential serum-based biomarkers for ovarian cancer diagnosis.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.18
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• pp.7947-7950
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• 2014

Background: Pancreatic cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer death with an increasing trend in China. Dietary intake is believed to play an important role in pancreatic cancer carcinogenesis. The aim of this paper was to evaluate associations between some dietary factors and risk of pancreatic cancer in a multi-centre case-control study conducted in China. Materials and Methods: Cases (n=323) were ascertained from four provincial cancer hospitals. Controls (n=323) were randomly selected from the family members of patients without pancreatic cancer in the same hospitals, 1:1 matched to cases by gender, age and study center. Data were collected with a questionnaire by personal interview. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were estimated using conditional logistic regression. Results: Tea intake (OR =0.49; 95%CI: 0.30-0.80) was associated with a half reduction in risk of pancreatic cancer. Reduced vegetable consumption (P trend: 0.04) was significant related to pancreatic cancer. Although no significant association was found for meat and fruit, ORs were all above or below the reference group. A protective effect was found for fruit (OR=1.73 for consumption of 1-2 times/week vs more than 3 times/week; 95%CI: 1.05-2.86). A high intake of meat was associated to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer (OR=0.59 for consumption of 1-2 times/week vs. more than 3 times/week; 95%CI: 0.35-0.97). Conclusions: The present study supports fruit consumption to reduce pancreatic cancer risk and indicates that high consumption of meat is related to an elevated risk. Direct inverse relations with tea and vegetable intake were also confirmed.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.109-118
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• 2019

As a result of the United States (U.S) -China trade conflict, the recent instability of the stock market has led many people to invest in Bitcoin, a commodity that many previous studies have interpreted as a safe asset. However, recent Bitcoin market price fluctuations suggest that the asset's stability stems from speculative purchasing trends. Therefore, classifying the characteristics of Bitcoin assets can be an important reference point in analyzing relevant accounting information. To determine whether Bitcoin is a safe asset, this study analyzed the correlation between Bitcoin and economic indicators to verify whether gold and Bitcoin responded similarly in time series analyses. These show that the regression explanatory power between the price of gold and bitcoin is low, thus no relation between the two assets could be drawn. Additionally, the Granger causality analyses of six individual economic variables and Bitcoin did not establish any notable causality. This can be interpreted that short-term price fluctuations have a significant impact on the nature of Bitcoin as an asset.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.227-235
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• 2009

Single seeds of common buckwheat cultivar Suwon No. 1 when subjected to SDS-PAGE revealed very high polymorphism. High variation existed for protein or protein subunits with molecular weight 54-47kDa, 45-25kDa and 16-11kDa. The electrophoregram showed variation for globulin as well as other protein fractions. About 300 proteins were separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis in common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench.) seed. Seed maturation is a dynamic and temporally regulated phase of seed development that determines the composition of storage proteins reserves in mature seeds. Buckwheat seeds from 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 days after pollination and matured stage were used for the analysis. This led to the establishment of high-resolution proteome reference maps, expression profiles of 48 spots. It was identified 48 proteins from MALDI-TOF/MS analysis of wild buckwheat seed storage proteins. The 48 proteins were found identical or similar to those of proteins reported in buckwheat and other plants; it is belonging to 9 major functional categories including seed storage proteins, stress/defense response, protein synthesis, photosynthesis, allergy proteins, amino acid, enzyme, metabolism, and miscellaneous. It appears that the major allergenic storage protein separated played the important role in buckwheat breeding and biochemical characterization.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.277-290
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• 2012

The metabolic profiles of Panax quinquefolius and its associated therapeutic values are critically affected by the repetitious steaming times. The times-dependent steaming effect of P. quinquefolius is not well-characterized and there is also no official guideline on its times of steaming. In this paper, a UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS method was developed for the qualitative profiling of multi-parametric metabolic changes of raw P. quinquefolius during the repetitious steaming process. Our method was successful in discriminating the differentially multi-steamed herbs. Meantime, the repetitious steaming-inducing chemical transformations in the preparation of black American ginseng (American ginseng that was subjected to 9 cycles of steaming treatment) were evaluated by this UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS based chemical profiling method. Under the optimized UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS conditions, 29 major ginsenosides were unambiguously identified and/or tentatively assigned in both raw and multi-steamed P. quinquefolius within 19 min, among them 18 ginsenosides were detected to be newly generated during the preparatory process of black American ginseng. The mechanisms involved were further deduced to be hydrolysis, dehydration, decarboxylation and addition reactions of the original ginsenosides in raw P. quinquefolius through analyzing mimic 9 cycles of steaming extracts of 14 pure reference ginsenosides. Our novel steaming times-dependent metabolic profiling approach represents the paradigm shift in the global quality control of multi-steamed P. quinquefolius products.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.19-29
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• 1989

It is well known that vital statistics is of great importance as basic data for establishing various range of national policies. Especially, vital statistics is important among demographic information for monitoring and evaluating the population policy, for constructing life table, for making population projection, and for studying various aspects of the society. In principle, the production of vital statistics is based on the registration system. It is, however, still observed that there are some limitations in utilizing fully the registration system due to the inherent problems such as problems in its coverage, accuracies and timeliness. Thus, as an alternative, many countries conduct survey on vital statistics in order to supplement the registration system and obtain in-depth data. Korea is no exception in this aspect. The National Bureau of Statistics carries out the so-called Continuous Demographic Survey. This is a kind of multi-round retrospective survey, covering 32, 000 households and having reference period of one month. The survey has also characteristics of multi-subject sample. Thus, surveys on economic activity status of population, house-hold income & expenditure, and social indicators are together conducted with the same sample. It is, however, found that the survey itself tends to have some quality problems. Especially, the quality problems connected with field data collection are summarized as coverage error, non-response error and response error. Although it is inevitable not to be free from these errors, we should make all our efforts to reduce the errors. The probable schemes pointed out in this paper are as follows : 1) the strengthening formal quality control activities, 2) the review of the survey method, i. e., the combining interview method with mail-sending and mail-back method or pick-up method, 3) well documentation for various cases found in every stage of data collection, and 4) the strengthening the analytical activities. It is, also, emphasized that sincerity of planners and interviewers is the most important factor among other things.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.95-101
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• 2016

Background and Objectives : The main purpose of this study is to clarify perceptual and acoustic analysis for the patients with hypothyroidism after thyroidectomy especially focused on the characteristics of speech articulation with special reference to the consonant production. Materials and Methods : The subjects of the research were 40 male and female adults (males : 5, females : 35). They were all received radioactive iodine treatment which after total thyroidectomy. Voice samples were collected during the three stages of after surgery, pre-radioisotope treatment (RIT), and post-RIT. The acoustic analysis was conducted by using Pratt (ver.5.2.21) after measuring voice onset time (VOT). The subjective evaluation of the voices used CAPE-V. Results : A significant decrease in overall severity was displayed in the CAPE-V following RIT. It may be conjectured that this is connected to the change in voice following RIT. The loudness of the sound displayed a significant decrease in the CAPE-V following RIT. It is conjectured that this is connected to the decrease in vocal intensity following RIT. No statistically significant results were revealed for the comparative analysis on the voice onset time (VOT) in all plosives during the three periods. Conclusion : Perceptually, the overall severity of the voice with hypothyroidism was changed significantly before and after RIT. Eventhough VOT were not significantly changed, it tended to decrease VOT in patients with hypothyroidism.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.137-144
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• 1997

In this paper, the design of a 10-bit 40-MS/s pipelined A/D converter is implemented to achieve low static power dissipation of 70 mW at the ${\pm}2.5\;V$ or +5 V power supply environment for high speed applications. A 1.5 b/stage pipeline architecture in the proposed ADC is used to allow large correction range for comparator offset and perform the fast interstage signal processing. According to necessity of high-performance op amps for design of the ADC, the new op amp with gain boosting based on a typical folded-cascode architecture is designed by using SAPICE that is an automatic design tool of op amps based on circuit simulation. A dynamic comparator with a capacitive reference voltage divider that consumes nearly no static power for this low power ADC was adopted. The ADC implemented using a $1.0{\mu}m$ n-well CMOS technology exhibits a DNL of ${\pm}0.6$ LSB, INL of +1/-0.75 LSB and SNDR of 56.3 dB for 9.97 MHz input while sampling at 40 MHz.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2012.04a
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• pp.763-768
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• 2012

Active window system which can reduce the environmental noises, such as traffic noise and construction noise, from an open window into a room was proposed in the previous works. The key idea of the proposed active window system was that the control sources are approximately collocated with the primary noise source in terms of the acoustic power for global noise reduction throughout the interior room. Moreover, because it is important not to intrude into the living space in the building environment, no error sensors were used and an open-loop control method using control sources at the window frame and the reference sensors outside the room was used for the proposed system. The open-loop control gain was calculated by the interior room model assumed as the semi-infinite space, and the interior sound field was estimated by Rayleigh integral equation under the baffled window model assumption. However, windows with a finite thickness should were considered for the calculation of the open-loop control gain of the active window system since these are representative of most window cases. Therefore, the finite thickness window model based on the Sgard's model was derived and the open-loop control gain using the interior sound field estimated by that model was calculated for active window system. To compare the performance of these two models, a scale-model experiment was performed in an anechoic chamber according to noise source directions. Experimental results showed that the performance for the thickness window model is better than the baffled window model as the angle with respect to the perpendicular direction is larger.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.336-346
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• 2009

As a follow-up survey of A Study of Monitoring Method on Exposure Level and Biomarkers of Environmental Pollutants-Focused on Ulsan Industrial Comlpex Area, published in 2005, a close examination of the health status was conducted for selected Ulsan residents. Based on the previous study, a total number of 129 subjects were divided into two groups: the exposure group consisted of 39 residents whose blood levels of lead, mercury and/or cadmium were higher than international reference values, and 90 residents of control group with normal levels. Environmental exposure level and its association with health condition were examined by various methods such as questionnaire, analyses of lead, mercury and cadmium in blood and medical examinations. The geometric mean concentrations of lead, mercury and cadmium in blood were respectively $2.07{\mu}g/d{\ell}$ (exposure $2.54{\mu}g/d{\ell}$, control $1.90{\mu}g/d{\ell}$), $5.94{\mu}g/L$ (exposure $8.57{\mu}g/L$, control $5.07{\mu}g/L$), $1.32{\mu}g/L$ (exposure $1.30{\mu}g/L$, control $1.33{\mu}g/L$). The concentrations of the three heavy metals in blood showed lower levels than internationally recommended values except for blood mercury. Also, any abnormal or, peculiar disease, or target tissue damage related to the heavy metals was not observed among the all subjects. Therefore, it can be said that no significant difference of heavy metal concentrations and health conditions was found between the two groups.