• The Korea Journal of Herbology
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2014

Objectives : The root bark of Morus alba L. (Mori Cortex Radidus; MCR) has been traditionally used to reduce heat from the lungs, soothe asthma, and edema and to promote urination. In this study, we investigated the effect of MCR ethanol extract on ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic asthma in mice. Methods : Mice were sensitized at day 0, 7 and 14 with 0.2% OVA and then airway challenged at day 21, 23, 25, 27 and 29 to induce allergic asthma. MCR extracts at doses of 50 and 100 mg/kg body weight (bw) were orally administered during OVA challenge once per a day. The levels of allergic mediators such as histamine, OVA-specific IgE, IFN-${\gamma}$ and IL-4 were measured in the sera of mice by ELISA. The histopathological change of lung tissues was observed with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. Results : MCR extract significantly decreased not only the serum levels of histamine, OVA-specific IgE, and IL-4 compared with those of OVA control group, but significantly increased the serum level of IFN-${\gamma}$. In H&E staining, MCR extract inhibited the infiltration of inflammatory cells and bronchiolar damage with epithelial thickening in lung tissues of OVA-induced asthma mice. Conclusions : These results indicate that MCR extract inhibits lung damage by asthma through regulating the allergic immune response, suggesting that MCR may be used as a useful agent for the treatment of allergic asthma.

• The Korea Journal of Herbology
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.9-15
• /
• 2013

Objectives : The root of Codonopsis pilosula (Fr.) Nannf. (Codonopsis Pilosulae Radix) has been traditionally used as a oriental medicine with an anti-thrombotic, antidiabetic, anticancer, and anti-gastric ulcer effects and immunological adjuvant. In this study, we investigated the effect of 70% ethanol extract of Codonopsis Pilosulae Radix (CPR-E) on ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic responses in mice. Methods : Mice were sensitized (1, 8, and 15 days) with OVA and airway challenged(22, 24, 26, 28, and 30 days) to induced allergic responses. CPR-E extract at doses of 50 and 100 mg/kg/body weight was orally administered from days 21 to 30 consecutively. The levels of allergic mediators such as histamine, OVA-specific immunoglobulin (Ig) E, and Th1/Th2 cytokines such as IFN-${\gamma}$ and IL-4 were measured in the sera of mice by ELISA. The histological change of lung tissue was observed by hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. Results : CPR-E extract significantly decreased the serum levels of histamine, OVA-specific IgE, and IL-4 compared with those of OVA control group, but significantly increased the serum level of IFN-${\gamma}$. Based on H&E staining, CPR-E extract inhibited the infiltration of inflammatory cells into lung tissues with histological changes. Conclusions : These results indicate that CPR-E extract has anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic responses through regulating the cytokine balance, suggesting that the extract may be useful for the treatment of allergic inflammatory diseases such as bronchial asthma and allergic rhinitis.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.50.1-50.12
• /
• 2022

Background: There is an urgent need to find reliable and rapid bovine tuberculosis (bTB) diagnostics in response to the rising prevalence of bTB worldwide. Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) recognizes components of bTB and initiates antigen-presenting cells to mediate humoral immunity. Evaluating the affinity of antigens with TLR2 can form the basis of a new method for the diagnosis of bTB based on humoral immunity. Objectives: To develop a reliable and rapid strategy to improve diagnostic tools for bTB. Methods: In this study, we expressed and purified the sixteen bTB-specific recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli. The two antigenic proteins, MPT70 and MPT83, which were most valuable for serological diagnosis of bTB were screened. Molecular docking technology was used to analyze the affinity of MPT70, MPT83, dominant epitope peptide of MPT70 (M1), and dominant epitope peptide MPT83 (M2) with TLR2, combined with the detection results of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to evaluate the molecular docking effect. Results: The results showed that interaction surface Cα-atom root mean square deviation of proteins (M1, M2, MPT70, MPT83)-TLR2 protein are less than 2.5 A, showing a high affinity. It is verified by clinical serum samples that MPT70, MPT83, MPT70-MPT83 showed good diagnostic potential for the detection of anti-bTB IgG and M1, M2 can replace the whole protein as the detection antigen. Conclusions: Molecular docking to evaluate the affinity of bTB protein and TLR2 combined with ELISA provides new insights for the diagnosis of bTB.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.39-47
• /
• 2022

Background: This was a randomized controlled clinical trial that aimed to evaluate the anesthetic efficacy of 2% lidocaine combined with different concentrations of epinephrine (plain, 1:200,000 and 1:80,000) during endodontic treatment of maxillary molars with symptomatic irreversible pulpitis. Methods: The trial included 144 adult patients who were randomly allocated to three treatment groups. All patients received buccal-plus-palatal infiltration. After 10 min, pulp sensibility testing was performed using an electric pulp test (EPT). If a tooth responded positively, anesthesia was considered to have failed. In the case of a negative EPT response, endodontic access was initiated under rubber dam isolation. The success of anesthesia was defined as having a pain score less than 55 on the Heft Parker visual analog scale (HP VAS), which was categorized as 'no pain' or 'faint/weak/mild' pain on the HP VAS. Baseline pre-injection and post-injection maximum heart rates were recorded. The Pearson chi-square test was used to analyze the anesthetic success rates at 5% significance. Results: Plain 2% lidocaine and 2% lidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine and 1:80,000 epinephrine had anesthetic success rates of 18.75%, 72.9%, and 82.3%, respectively. Statistical analysis indicated significant differences between the groups (P < 0.001, 𝛘² = 47.5, df = 2). The maximum heart rate increase was seen with 2% lidocaine solution with epinephrine. Conclusion: Adding epinephrine to 2% lidocaine significantly improves its anesthetic success rates during the root canal treatment of maxillary molars with symptomatic irreversible pulpitis.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.27 no.9
• /
• pp.243-251
• /
• 2022

In this paper, we propose a phenomenon that analyze the impact of market sentiment on China's real estate market through the perspective of behavioral economics. Previously, real estate market analyzation basically focus on some fundamental principles which include market price, monetary policies and income, etc. However, little research has explored market sentiment and its influence. By using principal components analysis (PCA), this study first creates buyer's sentiment and seller's sentiment to measure the heat of China's real estate market. Different from using traditional estimation method, the vector autoregressive model (VAR) is used to analyze how both sentiments affect real estate return. The overall results show that from unit root test and impulse response analyzation, the impact of seller's sentiment is positive to real estate market while buyer's sentiment is negative. At the same time, the higher seller's sentiment will have different influence on the housing market compared with the higher buyer's sentiment.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.83 no.4
• /
• pp.515-535
• /
• 2022

The strength models for fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP)-confined normal strength concrete (NC) cylinders available in the literature have been suggested based on small databases using limited variables of such structural members portraying less accuracy. The artificial neural network (ANN) is an advanced technique for precisely predicting the response of composite structures by considering a large number of parameters. The main objective of the present investigation is to develop an ANN model for the axial strength of FRP-confined NC cylinders using various parameters to give the highest accuracy of the predictions. To secure this aim, a large experimental database of 313 FRP-confined NC cylinders has been constructed from previous research investigations. An evaluation of 33 different empirical strength models has been performed using various statistical parameters (root mean squared error RMSE, mean absolute error MAE, and coefficient of determination R²) over the developed database. Then, a new ANN model using the Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) has been proposed based on the experimental database that portrayed the highest performance as compared with the previous models with R²=0.92, RMSE=0.27, and MAE=0.33. Therefore, the suggested ANN model can accurately capture the axial strength of FRP-confined NC cylinders that can be used for the further analysis and design of such members in the construction industry.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2023

The unconfined compression strength (UCS) of soils is commonly used either before or during the construction of geo-structures. In the pre-design stage, UCS as a mechanical property is obtained through a laboratory test that requires cumbersome procedures and high costs from in-situ sampling and sample preparation. As an alternative way, the empirical model established from limited testing cases is used to economically estimate the UCS. However, many parameters affecting the 1D soil compression response hinder employing the traditional statistical analysis. In this study, gene expression programming (GEP) is adopted to develop a prediction model of UCS with common affecting soil properties. A total of 79 undisturbed soil samples are collected, of which 54 samples are utilized for the generation of a predictive model and 25 samples are used to validate the proposed model. Experimental studies are conducted to measure the unconfined compression strength and basic soil index properties. A performance assessment of the prediction model is carried out using statistical checks including the correlation coefficient (R), the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), the relatively squared error (RSE), and external criteria checks. The prediction model has achieved excellent accuracy with values of R, RMSE, MAE, and RSE of 0.98, 10.01, 7.94, and 0.03, respectively for the training data and 0.92, 19.82, 14.56, and 0.15, respectively for the testing data. From the sensitivity analysis and parametric study, the liquid limit and fine content are found to be the most sensitive parameters whereas the sand content is the least critical parameter.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.34 no.6
• /
• pp.697-726
• /
• 2023

Brittleness as an important property of rock plays a crucial role both in the failure process of intact rock and rock mass response to excavation in engineering geological and geotechnical projects. Generally, rock brittleness indices are calculated from the mechanical properties of rocks such as uniaxial compressive strength, tensile strength and modulus of elasticity. These properties are generally determined from complicated, expensive and time-consuming tests in laboratory. For this reason, in the present research, an attempt has been made to predict the rock brittleness indices from simple, inexpensive, and quick laboratory test results namely dry unit weight, porosity, slake-durability index, P-wave velocity, Schmidt rebound hardness, and point load strength index using multiple linear regression, exponential regression, support vector machine (SVM) with various kernels, generating fuzzy inference system, and regression tree ensemble (RTE) with boosting framework. So, this could be considered as an innovation for the present research. For this purpose, the number of 39 rock samples including five igneous, twenty-six sedimentary, and eight metamorphic were collected from different regions of Iran. Mineralogical, physical and mechanical properties as well as five well known rock brittleness indices (i.e., B₁, B₂, B₃, B₄, and B₅) were measured for the selected rock samples before application of the above-mentioned machine learning techniques. The performance of the developed models was evaluated based on several statistical metrics such as mean square error, relative absolute error, root relative absolute error, determination coefficients, variance account for, mean absolute percentage error and standard deviation of the error. The comparison of the obtained results revealed that among the studied methods, SVM is the most suitable one for predicting B₁, B₂ and B₅, while RTE predicts B₃ and B₄ better than other methods.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2020.06a
• /
• pp.200-200
• /
• 2020

본 연구에서는 SWAT 모형과 APEX-Paddy 모형의 연계 모델링을 통한 대표 BMP(Best management practice) 적용, 정식시기 및 벼 생육기간을 고려한 시나리오 적용을 통해 농업용수의 관리 및 수질환경 개선 등에 활용할 수 있는 저영향 영농활동을 분석하고자 하였다. 만경강 유역을 대상으로 SWAT 모형을 구축하고 유역 내에 위치한 논 시험포장을 대상으로 강우-유출 및 비점오염원 모니터링 자료를 활용하여 APEX-Paddy 모형을 구축하였다. SWAT 모형과 APEX 모형을 연계하여 유역의 수문, 수질에 대한 정밀한 모델링을 수행하였으며, 이는 저영향 영농활동을 분석하기 위한 필드단위의 정확한 결과를 유역차원에 반영하기 위함이다. 특히, 본 연구에 사용된 APEX-Paddy 모형은 농촌진흥청과 Texas A&M의 공동연구를 통해 개발된 새로운 모형으로서 한국의 논 영농활동 및 담수환경을 반영하여 논에서의 유출 및 비점오염원을 모의할 수 있다. 연계 모형의 적합성 평가를 위해 R² (Determine of Coefficient), RMSE (Root mean square error), NSE (Nash-sutcliffe efficiency)를 사용하였다. 적합성 평가 지표를 분석한 결과, 유출량은 R² 평균 0.91, RMSE 평균 2.87 mm/day, NSE 평균 0.78로 나타났다. T-N 부하량은 R² 평균 0.74, RMSE 평균 59.3 kg/ha/day, NSE 평균 0.50으로 나타났다. 저영향 영농활동 관리방안을 위한 시나리오로 1) 논의 물꼬높이(BMP) 관리 적용, 2) 벼 생육기간 조절을 고려하여 기온변화에 따른 정식시기, 벼 생육기간 등을 조정하여 적용하였다. 기후변화 시나리오는 10개 GCM 모델의 RCP 8.5 시나리오를 통해 분석하였으며, 유역차원의 미래 영향을 분석한 결과, 물꼬관리 BMP에 따라 담수심이 증가되며, 관개량이 감소하고 유출량 10.7%, T-N 11.2% 저감되는 것을 나타냈으며, 벼 생육기간 조절은 BMP보다 상대적으로 효과가 높진 않았지만, 유출량 1.4%, T-N 3.1%의 저감효과를 나타냈다. 따라서 두 가지의 저영향 영농활동 관리방안은 미래기간의 기후변화에 대응하여 농업용수 및 물관리에 도움이 될 것으로 사료된다. 하지만 본 연구결과는 모델링 결과에 의존한 것이며, 추후 지속적인 연구와 보완이 필요하다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2022.10a
• /
• pp.143-143
• /
• 2022

Plant defense systems against pathogens have been studied extensively and are currently a hot topic in plant science. Using a reverse genetics technique, this study looked into the involvement of the NO-downregulated NAD(P)-binding Rossmann-fold superfamily gene in plant growth and defense in Arabidopsis thaliana. For this purpose, the knockout and overexpressing plant of the candidate gene along with the relevant controls were exposed to control, oxidative and nitro-oxidative stresses. The results showed that candidate gene negatively regulates plants' root and shoot lengths. To investigate the role of the candidate gene in plant basal defense, R-gene-mediated resistance and systemic acquired resistance (SAR) plants were challenged with virulent or avirulent strains of Pseudomonas syringae pathovar tomato (Psf) DC3000. The results showed that the candidate gene negatively regulates plants' basal defense, R-gene-mediated resistance and SAR. Further characterization via GO analysis associated the candidate gene with metabolic and cellular processes and response to light stimulus, nucleotide binding and cellular location in the cytosol and nucleus. Protein structure analysis indicated the presence of a canonical Oxidoreductase family NAD (P)-binding Rossmann fold domain of 120 amino acids with a total of 121 plant homologs across 35 different plant species in the clad streptophyta. Arabidopsis eFP browser showed its expression in almost all the above-ground parts. Protein analysis indicated C225 and C359 as potential targets for S-Nitrosylation by NO. SMART analysis indicated possible interactions with mevalonate/galactokinase, galacturonic acid kinase, arabinose kinase, putative xylulose kinase, GroES-like zinc-binding alcohol dehydrogenase and various glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenases.