• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.295-301
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• 2014

PURPOSE. Numerous methods were used to etch the fiber posts to improve its bonding to root canal dentin. Our aim was to evaluate the efficacy of 37% phosphoric acid in etching fiber posts in comparison with 24% hydrogen peroxide. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Ninety human maxillary central incisors were taken and post space preparation was done. Ninety fiber posts were taken and divided into three groups (n=30) based on the surface treatment they received ($H_3PO_4$, $H_2O_2$, distilled water) and each group was further divided (n=10) based on the time period of application (15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds). All the posts were luted into canals using Rely X UniCem-2. Each tooth was then sectioned into six slices and subjected to push out test. Data obtained was subjected to statistical analysis at P<.05. The surface topography was evaluated using scanning electron microscopy. RESULTS. Highest bond strength values were noted in 15 seconds etched phosphoric acid group and 60 seconds etched hydrogen peroxide group with no significant difference between two groups. Surface topography revealed complete epoxy layer removal with no damage to its structural integrity in those groups. CONCLUSION. $H_3PO_4$ etching for a period of 15 seconds is an effective alternative in improving the adhesion of fiber post to root dentin.

• BMB Reports
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.126-131
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• 2017

P48 Ebp1 is expressed in rapidly proliferating cells such as cancer cells and accelerates cell growth and survival. However, its expression pattern and role in central nervous system development have not been studied. Here, we demonstrated the spatiotemporal expression pattern of p48 Ebp1 during embryonic development and the postnatal period. During embryonic development, p48 Ebp1 was highly expressed in the brain. Expression gradually decreased after birth but was still more abundant than p42 expression after birth. Strikingly, we found that p48 Ebp1 was expressed in a cell type specific manner in neurons but not astrocytes. Moreover, p48 Ebp1 physically interacted with beta tubulin but not alpha tubulin. This fits with its accumulation in distal microtubule growth cone regions. Furthermore, in injured hippocampal slices, p48 Ebp1 introduction promoted axon regeneration. Thus, we speculate that p48 Ebp1 might contribute to microtubule dynamics acting as an MAP and promotes CNS axon regeneration.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.117-122
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• 2006

Background: Caveolin, a family of integral membrane proteins are a principal component of caveolae membranes. In this study, we investigated the effect of p38 kinase on differentiation and on inflammatory responses in sodium nitroprusside (SNP)-treated chondrocytes. Methods: Rabbit articular chondrocytes were prepared from cartilage slices of 2-week-old New Zealand white rabbits by enzymatic digestion. SNP was used as a nitric oxide (NO) donor. In this experiments measuring SNP dose response, primary chondrocytes were treated with various concentrations of SNP for 24h. The time course of the SNP response was determined by incubating cells with 1mM SNP for the indicated time period $(0{\sim}24h)$. The cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and type II collagen expression levels were determined by immunoblot analysis, and prostaglandin $E_2\;(PGE_2)$ assay was used to measure the COX-2 activity. The tyrosine phosphorylation of caveolin-1 was determined by immunoblot analysis and immunostaining. Results: SNP treatment stimulated tyrosine phosphorylation of caveolin-1 and activation of p38 kinase. SNP additionally caused dedifferentiation and inflammatory response. We showed previously that SNP treatment stimulated activation of p38 kinase and ERK-1/-2. Inhibition of p38 kinase with SB203580 reduced caveolin-1 tyrosine phosphorylation and COX-2 expression but enhanced dedifferentiation, whereas inhibition of ERK with PD98059 did not affect caveolin-1 tyrosine phosphorylation levels, suggesting that ERK at least is not related to dedifferentiation and COX-2 expression through caveolin-1 tyrosine phosphorylation. Conclusion: Our results indicate that SNP in articular chondrocytes stimulates dedifferentiation and inflammatory response via p38 kinase signaling in association with caveolin-1 phosphorylation.

• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.229-236
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• 2014

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS) are implicated in cellular signaling processes and as a cause of oxidative stress. Recent studies indicate that ROS and RNS are important signaling molecules involved in nociceptive transmission. Xanthine oxidase (XO) system is a well-known system for superoxide anions ($O{_2}^{{\cdot}_-}$) generation, and sodium nitroprusside (SNP) is a representative nitric oxide (NO) donor. Patch clamp recording in spinal slices was used to investigate the role of $O{_2}^{{\cdot}_-}$ and NO on substantia gelatinosa (SG) neuronal excitability. Application of xanthine and xanthine oxidase (X/XO) compound induced membrane depolarization. Low concentration SNP ($10{\mu}M$) induced depolarization of the membrane, whereas high concentration SNP (1 mM) evoked membrane hyperpolarization. These responses were significantly decreased by pretreatment with phenyl N-tert-butylnitrone (PBN; nonspecific ROS and RNS scavenger). Addition of thapsigargin to an external calcium free solution for blocking synaptic transmission, led to significantly decreased X/XO-induced responses. Additionally, X/XO and SNP-induced responses were unchanged in the presence of intracellular applied PBN, indicative of the involvement of presynaptic action. Inclusion of GDP-${\beta}$-S or suramin (G protein inhibitors) in the patch pipette decreased SNP-induced responses, whereas it failed to decrease X/XO-induced responses. Pretreatment with n-ethylmaleimide (NEM; thiol-alkylating agent) decreased the effects of SNP, suggesting that these responses were mediated by direct oxidation of channel protein, whereas X/XO-induced responses were unchanged. These data suggested that ROS and RNS play distinct roles in the regulation of the membrane excitability of SG neurons related to the pain transmission.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.263-271
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• 2014

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the use of dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) in the diagnosis of osteoporosis among menopausal and postmenopausal women by using only a CBCT viewer program. Materials and Methods: Thirty-eight menopausal and postmenopausal women who underwent dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) examination for hip and lumbar vertebrae were scanned using CBCT (field of view: $13cm{\times}15cm;$ voxel size: 0.25 mm). Slices from the body of the mandible as well as the ramus were selected and some CBCT-derived variables, such as radiographic density (RD) as gray values, were calculated as gray values. Pearson's correlation, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) evaluation based on linear and logistic regression were performed to choose the variable that best correlated with the lumbar and femoral neck T-scores. Results: RD of the whole bone area of the mandible was the variable that best correlated with and predicted both the femoral neck and the lumbar vertebrae T-scores; further, Pearson's correlation coefficients were 0.5/0.6 (p value=0.037/0.009). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy based on the logistic regression were 50%, 88.9%, and 78.4%, respectively, for the femoral neck, and 46.2%, 91.3%, and 75%, respectively, for the lumbar vertebrae. Conclusion: Lumbar vertebrae and femoral neck osteoporosis can be predicted with high accuracy from the RD value of the body of the mandible by using a CBCT viewer program.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.491-500
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• 2009

This study was carried out to investigate the preference for traditional food of university students through the analysis of their daily meal types. Questionnaires were collected from a total of 197 students from December 2007 to February 2008 in Chungnam Province. The results are as follows; 148 of the respondents (73.0%) prefer Korean traditional meal as their favorite food. The significant differences are found in both gender groups and major groups (p<.05). 178 of the respondents (90.4%) answered that the traditional foods are excellent and good. However, the foods were significantly (p<.05) evaluated that major students consider them to be 'excellent' foods, while non-major students consider them to be 'good' foods. 136 of respondents (69.0%) answered that the traditional foods have beneficial influences on their health. In the survey on intake frequency of traditional meals, 137 of respondents (65.9%) have traditional foods more than twice a day. The ratio of traditional meal intake of male students is a significantly higher level (p<.05) than that of female students. Their preference for traditional rice cake, fermented rice punch, and juice mixed with fruits is a very high level of the average of 4.19, 4.22 and 4.34, respectively. The preference for Kimchi, Bulgoki, boiled beef slices, sundae and jelly was a relatively high level of the average of 4.43, 4.65, 4.14, 4.30, and 4.05, respectively. Concludingly, the research shows the majority of students enjoy korean traditional food and expect Korean food as favorite food to be developed and to be inherited.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.2380-2388
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• 2015

A hardware implementation of MOD(moving object detection) algorithm using EGML(effective Gaussian mixture learning)- based background subtraction to detect moving objects in video is described. Some approximations of EGML calculations are applied to reduce hardware complexity, and pipelining technique is adopted to improve operating speed. The MOD processor designed in Verilog-HDL has been verified by FPGA-in-the-loop verification using MATLAB/Simulink. The MOD processor has 2,218 slices on the Virtex5-XC5VSX95T FPGA device and its throughput is 102 MSamples/s at 102 MHz clock frequency. Evaluation results of the MOD processor for 12 images in the IEEE CDW-2012 dataset show that the average recall value is 0.7631, the average precision value is 0.7778 and the average F-measure value is 0.7535.

• Advances in Traditional Medicine
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.534-539
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• 2008

Shenqi-wan, Oriental herbal medicine formulation, has traditionally been used for the treatment of delayed mental and physical development in children, complications of diabetes, and glomerulonephritis. In the present study, we investigated the protective effect of the aqueous extract of Shenqi-wan and its fractions against N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-induced exitotoxicity in rat hippocampal CA1 neurons. Fractions were elucidated at 0 - 10 min, 11 - 20 min, and 21 - 30 min by using gravity column chromatography method. In the present results, treatment with NMDA on cultured hippocampal slices induced neuronal death in the hippocampal CA1 region. Pretreatment with the Shenqi-wan did not exerted protective effect, however its fractions suppressed NMDA-induced neuronal damage. The fraction elucidated at 11 - 20 min showed the most potent protective effect. These results revealed that effective substances of the Shenqi-wan against NMDA-induced excitotoxicity may exist mainly in the fraction elucidated at 11 - 20 min.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.691-700
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• 2000

The standard volume ray-tracing, optimized with octree, needs to repeatedly traverse hierarchical structures for each ray that often leads to redundant computations. It also employs the expensive 3D interpolation for producing high quality images. In this paper, we present a new ray-casting method that efficiently computes shaded colors and opacities at resampling points by traversing octree only once. This method traverses volume data in object-order, finds resampling points on slices incrementally, and performs resampling based on 2D interpolation. While the early ray-termination, which is one of the most effective optimization techniques, is not easily combined with object-order methods, we solved this problem using a dynamic data structure in image space. Considering that our new method is easy to implement, and need little additional memory, it will be used as very effective volume method that fills the performance gap between ray-casting and shear-warping.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.2C
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• pp.193-202
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm that can reduce the complexity for inter mode decision of the H.264 encoder. The main idea consists of two techniques. The first one is the technique early terminating mode decision process. We focused on the skip and $16{\times}16$ mode because these modes occupies the largest portion in most of sequences. The second one is the technique skipping unnecessary $8{\times}8$ modes. The time consumption caused by the $8{\times}8$ mode is very considerable. Therefore if we can extract the unnecessary $8{\times}8$ mode calculation well, a large amount of time can be saved in total encoding process. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 43% speed up ratio with insignificant PSNR loss. The increase of total bits encoded is also not noticeable.