• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.199-207
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• 2018

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Fermented Laminaria japonica (FL), a type sea tangle used as a functional food ingredient, has been reported to possess cognitive improving properties that may aid in the treatment of common neurodegenerative disorders, such as dementia. MATERIALS/METHODS: We examined the effects of FL on scopolamine (Sco)- and ethanol (EtOH)-induced hippocampus-dependent memory impairment, using the Passive avoidance (PA) and Morris water maze (MWM) tests. To examine the underlying mechanisms associated with neuroprotective effects, we analyzed acetylcholine (ACh) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity, brain tissue expression of muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR), cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2), and immunohistochemical analysis, in the hippocampus of mice, compared to current drug therapy intervention. Biochemical blood analysis was carried out to determine the effects of FL on alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST), and triglyceride (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) levels. 7 groups (n = 10) consisted of a control (CON), 3 Sco-induced dementia and 3 EtOH-induced dementia groups, with both dementia group types containing an untreated group (Sco and EtOH); a positive control, orally administered donepezil (Dpz) (4mg/kg) (Sco + Dpz and EtOH + Dpz); and an FL (50 mg/kg) treatment group (Sco + FL50 and EtOH + FL50), orally administered over the 4-week experimental period. RESULTS: FL50 significantly reduced EtOH-induced increase in AST and ALT levels. FL50 treatment reduced EtOH-impaired step-through latency time in the PA test, and Sco- and EtOH-induced dementia escape latency times in the MWM test. Moreover, anticholinergic effects of Sco and EtOH on the brain were reversed by FL50, through the attenuation of AChE activity and elevation of ACh concentration. FL50 elevated ERK1/2 protein expression and increased p-CREB (ser133) in hippocampus brain tissue, according to Western blot and immunohistochemistry analysis, respectively. CONCLUSION: Overall, these results suggest that FL may be considered an efficacious intervention for Sco- and EtOH-induced dementia, in terms of reversing cognitive impairment and neuroplastic dysfunction.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.31 no.5_6
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• pp.371-378
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• 2004

This paper presents the implementation and performance of the HVIA-GE card, which is a hardware implementation of the Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) based on Gigabit Ethernet. The HVIA-GE card is a 32-bit/33MHz PCI adapter containing an FPGA for the VIA protocol engine and a Gigabit Ethernet chip set to construct a high performance physical network. HVIA-GE performs virtual-to-physical address translation, Doorbell, and send/receive completion operations in hardware without kernel intervention. In particular, the Address Translation Table (ATT) is stored on the local memory of the HVIA-GE card, and the VIA protocol engine efficiently controls the address translation process by directly accessing the ATT. As a result, the communication overhead during send/receive transactions is greatly reduced. Our experimental results show the maximum bandwidth of 93.7MB/s and the minimum latency of 11.9${\mu}\textrm{s}$. In terms of minimum latency HVIA-GE performs 4.8 times and 9.9 times faster than M-VIA and TCP/IP, respectively, over Gigabit Ethernet. In addition, the maximum bandwidth of HVIA-GE is 50.4% and 65% higher than M-VIA and TCP/IP respectively.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.44 no.10
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• pp.1005-1018
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• 2017

Recently, virtualization has become an essential component of cloud computing due to its various strengths, including maximizing server resource utilization, easy-to-maintain software, and enhanced data protection. However, since virtualization allows sharing physical resources among the VMs, the system performance can be deteriorated due to device contentions. In this paper, we first investigate the I/O overhead based on the number of VMs on the same server platform and analyze the block I/O process of the KVM hypervisor. We also propose an in-memory block cache mechanism, called QBic, to overcome I/O virtualization latency. QBic is capable of monitoring the block I/O process of the hypervisor and stores the data with a high access frequency in the cache. As a result, QBic provides a fast response for VMs and reduces the I/O contention to physical devices. Finally, we present a performance measurement of QBic to verify its effectiveness.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2010

Mapping virtual process topology to physical processor topology is one of the most important design issues in parallel programming. However, the mapping problem is complicated due to the topology irregularity and routing complexity. This paper proposes a new process mapping scheme called adjacency-based mapping (AM) for irregular cluster systems assuming that the two-dimensional mesh process topology is specified as an interprocess communication pattern. The cluster systems have been studied and developed for many years since they provide high interconnection flexibility, scalability, and expandability which are not attainable in traditional regular networks. The proposed AM tries to map neighboring processes in virtual process topology to adjacent processors in physical processor topology. Simulation study shows that the proposed AM results in better mapping quality and shorter interprocess latency compared to the conventional approaches.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.5-24
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• 2010

Data fusion is an attractive technology because it allows various trade-offs related to performance metrics, e.g., energy, latency, accuracy, fault-tolerance and security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Under a complicated environment, each sensor node must be equipped with more than one type of sensor module to monitor multi-targets, so that the complexity for the fusion process is increased due to the existence of various physical attributes. In this paper, we first investigate the process and performance of multi-attribute fusion in data gathering of WSNs, and then propose a self-adaptive threshold method to balance the different change rates of each attributive data. Furthermore, we present a method to measure the energy-conservation efficiency of multi-attribute fusion. Based on our proposed methods, we design a novel energy equilibrium routing method for WSNs, viz., multi-attribute fusion tree (MAFT). Simulation results demonstrate that MAFT achieves very good performance in terms of the network lifetime.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.36-46
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• 1994

The event-related potentials are difined as the changes in voltage that occur at paticular time before, during and after something that happens in the physical world or some psychological processes. The possibilities of clinical applications of ERP are considered because the endogenous potentials such as P3 and contingent negative variation(CNV) are determined by the psychological significance of the stimulus. The P3 is a positive wave that occurs when a subject detects an informative task-relevant stimulus. The P3 amplitude and latency are affected by the various factors as subjective probabilites, stimulus meaning and information transmission. It is suggested that P3 wave is associated with the decision making, cognitive or perceptual closure, memory updating and transfer of information to consciousness etc. Although the intracerebral origin of the P3 wave is not known, the P3 may have multiple intracerebral generators. The CNV is a slow potential shift occuring during the foreperiod, between warning and response signals, in a reaction time experiment. It is related to expectancy, preparation etc. The abnormal findings of P3 wave and CNV in various psychiatric disorders are also discussed.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.98-104
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• 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess sleep quality and to identify predictors of poor sleep quality in nursing students. Methods: The participants surveyed were 302 individuals at G College located in Kangwon-do. The participants completed the questionnaire including demographic characteristics, health behavior, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for sleep quality. The BMI was calculated using height and weight. For the statistical analysis, $X^2$ test, Spearman correlation, and logistic regression were performed using the SAS window (version 9.2) program. Results: From the 302 individuals, 219 (72.5%) had poor sleep quality. The results showed significant correlations between physical activity and sleep quality, as well as between sleep duration and sleep quality. The BMI and sleep quality did not show any significant relationship. The factors affecting sleep quality were sleep latency (OR, 4.167; 95% CI, 1.406-12.344), sleep duration (OR, 6.717; 95% CI, 2.386-18.912), and sedentary hours (OR, 2.971; 95% CI, 1.095-8.064). Conclusion: The study demonstrates that poor sleep quality is common in nursing students, and intervention study is needed to improve sleep quality in nursing students. Additional studies are needed to determine the relationship between BMI and sleep quality.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.170-173
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• 2014

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in conjunction with task oriented training, on cortical excitability and upper extremity function recovery in stroke patients. This study was conducted with 31 subjects who were diagnosed as a hemiparesis by stroke. Participants in the experimental (16 members) and control groups (15 members) received rTMS and sham rTMS, respectively, during a 10 minutes session, five days per week for four weeks, followed by task oriented training during a 30 minutes session, five days per week for four weeks. Motor cortex excitability was performed by motor evoked potential and upper limb function was evaluated by motor function test. Both groups showed a significant increment in motor function test and amplitude, latency in motor evoked potential compared to pre-intervention (p < 0.05). A significant difference in post-training gains for the motor function test, amplitude in motor evoked potential was observed between the experimental group and the control group (p < 0.05). The findings of the current study demonstrated that incorporating rTMS in task oriented training may be beneficial in improving the effects of stroke on upper extremity function recovery.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.179-186
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• 2008

This paper presents a portable tele-assessment system designed for remote evaluation of the hypertonic elbow joint of neurologically impaired patients. A patient's upper limb was securely strapped to a portable limb-stretching device which is connected through Internet to a portable haptic device by which a clinician remotely moved the patient's elbow joint and felt the resistance from the patient. Elbow flexion angle and joint torques were measured from both master and slave devices and bilaterally fed back to their counterparts. In order to overcome problems associated with the network latency, two different tele-operation schemes were proposed depending on relative speed of tasks compared to the amount of time delay. For slow movement tasks, the bilateral tele-operation was achieved in real-time by designing control architectures after causality analysis. For fast movement tasks, we used a semi-real-time tele-operation scheme which provided the clinicians with stable and transparent feeling. The tele-assessment system was verified experimentally on patients with stroke. The devices were made portable and low cost, which makes it potentially more accessible to patients in remote areas.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.506-509
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• 2008

A 2-month-old, intact female white Bull Terrier presented because of suspected deafness. The coat color was predominantly white and the iris color, of both eyes, was brown. The dog did not respond to the owner's voice when the sound stimuli were presented outside of the visual field; however, the dog responded to visual gestures. The other physical, neurological, otoscopic, radiographic, and blood examinations were unremarkable. To assess the apparent deafness, brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAER) were recorded and analyzed in the dog with suspected deafness as well as a normal littermate. The response in the normal littermate consisted of a series of five wave peaks (I-V) with decreased amplitude and prolonged latency as the stimulus intensity decreased. The BAER from the dog suspected of deafness appeared as a flat line and did not reveal identifiable peaks that corresponded to those found in the normal littermate. Thus, congenital, sensorineural and bilateral deafness was confirmed by the BAER.