• CELLMED
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.6.1-6.7
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• 2021

In situ gelling devices, as they enter the body, are dosage forms in the shape of the sol but turn into gel types under physiological circumstances. Transition from sol to gel is contingent on one or a mixture of diverse stimuli, such as transition of pH control of temperature, irradiation by UV, by the occurrence of certain ions or molecules. Such characteristic features may be commonly employed in drug delivery systems for the production of bioactive molecules for continuous delivery vehicles. The technique of in situ gelling has been shown to be impactful in enhancing the potency of local or systemic drugs supplied by non-parenteral pathways, increasing their period of residence at the absorption site. Formulation efficacy is further improved with the use of mucoadhesive agents or the use of polymers with both in situ gelling properties and the ability to bind with the mucosa/mucus. The most popular and common approach in recent years has provided by the use of polymers with different in situ gelation mechanisms for synergistic action between polymers in the same formulation. In situ gelling medicine systems in recent decades have received considerable interest. Until administration, it is in a sol-zone and is able to form gels in response to various endogenous factors, for e.g elevated temperature, pH changes and ions. Such systems can be used in various ways for local or systemic supply of drugs and successfully also as vehicles for drug-induced nano- and micro-particles. In this review we will discuss about various aspects about use of these in situ gels as novel drug delivery systems.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.606-612
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• 2007

Since the introduction of chemotherapy for the treatment of childhood leukemia more than 50 years ago, the results of childhood cancer have improved dramatically. The 5-year survival rate of disease, many of which were uniformly fatal in the prechemotherapy era, reached to more than 75%. This remarkable improvement in survival is a direct result of the incorporation of chemotherapeutics into treatment regimens that previously relied only on surgery or radiotherapy for the primary tumor. The multimodality approach, which integrates surgery and radiotherapy to control local disease with chemotherapy to eradicate systemic or metastatic disease, has become the standard approach to treating most childhood cancers. The overall improvement in outcomes in childhood solid tumors has been related to the development of multidisplinary cooperative studies that has permitted the development of well-designed tumor treatment protocols characterized by uniform staging criteria, sharing informations in pathologic classification, uniform methods for tumor markers, oncogenes, and other biologic and genetic factors. Important advances in the biologic study of cancer and its genetic basis led to a number of observations that impact directly on the management of childhood solid tumors. Identification of specific genes, oncogenes, tumor markers, and other biologic and pathologic factors plays an important role in both staging and clarifying the risk categorization of individual patients. Treatment of the patient is influenced by the recognition of specific risk factors. This knowledge has resulted in a change in the approach to care based not only on staging criteria, but also on risk-based management. This concept uses various risk factors of outcomes. Risk-based management allows for each patient to maximize survival, minimize long-term morbidity and improve the quality of life, especially for children's growth and development.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.223-239
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• 2020

It is important for urban planners and policy makers to understand complex, diverse urban demands and social structure, but this is not easy due to lack of data that represents the dynamics of residents at micro-geographical level. This paper explores how to create population data at at a micro-level by allocating population data to building. It attempted to allocate population data stored in a grid layer (100 meters by 100 meters) into a building footprint layer that represents the appearance of physical buildings. For the allocation, this paper describes a systemic approach that classifies grid cells into five prototypical patterns based on the composition of residential building types in a grid cell. This approach enhances allocation accuracy by accommodating heterogeneity of urban space rather than relying on the assumption of uniform spatial homogeneity of populations within an aerial unit. Unlike the methods that disaggregate population data to the parcel, this approach is more applicable to Asian cities where large multifamily residential parcels are common. However, it should be noted that this paper does not demonstrate the validity of the allocated population since there is a lack of the actual data available to be compared with the current estimated population. In the case of water and electricity, the data is already attached to an individual address, and hence, it can be considered to the purpose of the validation for the allocation. By doing so, it will be possible to identify innovative methods that create a population distribution dataset representing the comprehensive and dynamic nature of the population at the micro geographical level.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.5-13
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• 2007

Objectives : Depression disturbs the individual life from the loss of productivity to suicide. Furthermore the whole society is also influenced by depression in social and economic areas. Many scientific treatment methods are known to be effective in depression. But in reality more than half of patients with depression prefer self help treatment rather than medically based treatment. For the patients with mild depression and primary physicians, it is reasonable to provide the evidence based self care including self help or alternative treatment. This study is supported by the Korean Health 21 R&D Project for the Depression Center to establish the Korean treatment guideline for depression. Methods : The members of Depression Center including the authors attended the workshops where the methods of evidence based medicine such as literature search, quality evaluation of the articles, making the level of evidence were educated. The professional librarians helped the authors for get the searched articles. Among the total of 354 abstracts of systemic review and 300 abstracts of random controlled trials, 3 systemic reviews and 2 random controlled trials were the main structure of evaluation. Result : Among the 37 self care methods known to be effective for depression, 11 kinds of methods were worth of evaluation. The first step for the self care of mild depression is to use St. John's wort, exercise, bibliotherapy, and light therapy in depression during winter season. Acupuncture, negative ion therapy, massage, relaxation technique are known to be efective with evidence. Music therapy, hypnotherapy, and aromatherapy are known to be effective but until now the evidences is insufficient and further evaluations are needed. Conclusion : Among 11 listed self-care methods, several methods need more evidence especially in Korean situation. Exercise is the most recommendable evidence based self care method in Korea nowadays. St. John's wort is effective with evidence, but it is not the OTC drug in Korea, so it is not recommendable now. For the bibliotherapy, there is no book such as "Feeling Good" in Korea. Only the introductory book about depression is available. Publishing the self help book based upon cognitive behavioral approach or psychodynamic approach is needed. Light therapy is practiced in a few clinics, but not self-help style. Exposure to the sunlight is recommended in the level of commen sense. These self care methods are for the mild patient. Moderate to severe patients with depression should seek the professional treatment.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.547-553
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• 2014

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most common brain malignancies and has a very poor prognosis. Recent evidence suggests that the presence of cancer stem cells (CSC) in GBM and the rare CSC subpopulation that is resistant to chemotherapy may be responsible for the treatment failure and unfavorable prognosis of GBM. A garlic-derived compound, Z-ajoene, has shown a range of biological activities, including anti-proliferative effects on several cancers. Here, we demonstrated for the first time that Z-ajoene specifically inhibits the growth of the GBM CSC population. CSC sphere-forming inhibition was achieved at a concentration that did not exhibit a cytotoxic effect in regular cell culture conditions. The specificity of this inhibitory effect on the CSC population was confirmed by detecting CSC cell surface marker CD133 expression and biochemical marker ALDH activity. In addition, stem cell-related mRNA profiling and real-time PCR revealed the differential expression of CSC-specific genes, including Notch, Wnt, and Hedgehog, upon treatment with Z-ajoene. A proteomic approach, i.e., reverse-phase protein array (RPPA) and Western blot analysis, showed decreased SMAD4, p-AKT, 14.3.3 and FOXO3A expression. The protein interaction map (http://string-db.org/) of the identified molecules suggested that the AKT, ERK/p38 and $TGF{\beta}$ signaling pathways are key mediators of Z-ajoene's action, which affects the transcriptional network that includes FOXO3A. These biological and bioinformatic analyses collectively demonstrate that Z-ajoene is a potential candidate for the treatment of GBM by specifically targeting GBM CSCs. We also show how this systemic approach strengthens the identification of new therapeutic agents that target CSCs.

• Herbal Formula Science
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.237-250
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• 2018

Objectives : This study is a pharmacological network approach, aimed to identify the potential active compounds contained in Curcumae Radix, and their associated targets, to predict the various bio-reactions involved, and finally to establish the cornerstone for the deep-depth study of the representative mechanisms. Methods : The active compounds of Curcumae Radix have been identified using Traditional Chinese Medicine System Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform. The UniProt database was used to collect each of information of all target proteins associated with the active compounds. To find the bio-metabolic processes associated with each target, the DAVID6.8 Gene Functional classifier tool was used. Compound-Target and Target-Pathway networks were analyzed via Cytoscape 3.40. Results : The target information from 32 potential active compounds of Curcumae Radix was collected through TCMSP analysis. The active compounds interact with 133 target genes engaging in total of 885 biological pathways. The most relevant pathway was the lipid-related metabolism, in which 3 representative active compounds were naringenin, oleic acid, and ${\beta}-sitosterol$. The mostly targeted proteins in the lipid pathway were ApoB, AKT1 and PPAR. Conclusions : The pharmacological network analysis is convenient approach to predict the overall metabolic mechanisms in medicinal herb research, which can reduce the processes of various experimental trial and error and provide key clues that can be used to validate and experimentally verify the core compounds.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.265-270
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• 1976

Implantation of a permanent pacemaker is a widely accepted procedure for the patient with complete heart block.As a result of these device, the prognosis for patients with Adams-Stokes syndrome caused by complete A-V block and other cardiac arrhythmia have become much more optimistic. Permanent pacemaker implantation by means of a transvenous approach has made the operative risk much less and the procedure simpler. However, a number of complications have been reported in the literature regarding transvenous endocardial pacemaker implantation during the last a decade. The patient presented in this paper is a 26-year old girl who was implanted with a permanent pacemaker at 14 years of age because of a congenital A-V block. Following first exchange of pulse generator, the electrode (lead) was fractured, so that by the pulse generator, a change to the transvenous technique of implantation was made, After this, there were episodes of recurrent wound infection on three occasions, even though the site of pulse generator implantation was exchanged to the contralateral side of chest wall, massive doses of antibiotics were administered and sensitivity tests for coagulase positive staphylococcal infection were performed. Though there was no definite evidence of blood stream infection by blood culture, we decided not to use the transvenous technique and not to implant the pulse generator in the chest wall because the venous system and the entire anterior chest wall appeared to be diseased or contaminated by virulent pyogenic organisms. Finally this intractable systemic and local wound infection was successfully controlled by myocardial lead implantation via a subxiphoid approach and implantation of the pulse generator far down in the abdominal wall. The causes and routes of recurrent wound infection and possible blood born infection in this particular patient are still obscure. We strongly believe that myocardial pacemaker implantation is much safer than transvenous endocardial pacemaker implantation & myocardial pacemaker implantation is a definite method for controlling such an intractable wound infection. following transvenous pacemaker implantation.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.57-73
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• 2006

This paper describes a methodology for automating the material handling equipment (MHE) evaluation and selection processes by combining knowledge-based rules and fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach. The methodology is proposed to solve the MHE selection problems under fuzzy environment. At the primary stage, the most appropriate MHE type among the alternatives for each material flow link is searched. Knowledge-based rules are employed to retrieve the alternatives for each material flow link. To consider and compare the alternatives, multiple design factors are considered. These factors include both quantitative and qualitative measures. The qualitative measures are converted to numerical measures using fuzzy logic. The concept of fuzzy logic is applied to evaluation matrices used for the selection of the most suitable MHE through a fuzzy linguistic approach. Thus, this paper demonstrates the potential applicability of fuzzy theory in the MHE applications and provides a systemic guidance in the decision-making process.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.45-51
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• 2004

Background : Atopic Dermatitis is a chronic and recurrent skin disease. it is characterized as itch-scratch cycle and topical or systemic use of corticosteroids is required in western medicine. Though its effects on major symptoms are impressive, these treatments are prone to several side effects and tend to recur after months or years. So potential treatments have been actively studied in Estern medicine, especially Sasang constitutional therapy, which has fewer side effects. Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Sasang constitutional therapy on treating severe adult Atopic Dermatitis and preventing its recurrent symptoms. Methods : fifteen patients who had severe adult Atopic Dermatitis attended treatment of Sasang constitutional therapy and were followed up for one year. An oriental internal specialist first isolated Sasang constitution and a distinctive body type. Grading of Atopic dermatitis was measured by the guidelines offered by Rajka G. and Langeland T. Results : After treatment with Sasang constitutional therapy, the patients symptoms were improved and the mean Rajka and Langeland score reduced significantly from $7.73{\pm}0.79\;to\;3.4{\pm}10.91$. During the follow-up period of one year, the mean Rajka and Langeland score was $2.72{\pm}2.06$ which was lower than last treatment. Conclusions : The results of this study support Sasang constitutional therapy as an effective therapy for severe adult Atopic Dermatitis. Follow up data suggest that this Eastern medical approach is of greater clinical value than the western medical approach in the long term.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.622-627
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• 2009

Business process engineering (BPE) is a top-down management approach for increasing efficiency and productivity through radical and fundamental changes to the business processes of the organization. BPE requires firms to initially develop a model of the existing business processes of the firm to distinguish functional tasks from processes used for coordinating inputs, activities and outputs. The model is used for understanding the business processes in the organization and to simulate the effect of changes to the processes. The model can also be used to justify business processes, which involves assessing whether the business process provides value to the customer in its current configuration. Justification requires a careful examination of the key business processes used by the firm to identify systemic shortcomings in the process and to create a new business process to produce greater efficiency. BPE also considers automating as many business processes as possible to increase operational efficiency and the integration of business process tasks. The construction industry has been slow to adopt BPE because of its project approach in which a major firm contracts with various functional service providers and regards each project as unique. The industry focuses on functional task efficiency rather than business process efficiency. There is no formal methodology or criteria for determining whether a business process is effective for a construction firm in its current configuration. The use of performance measures such as costs, task duration times or other metrics can be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of an existing business process and for modeling the possible outcome of a fundamental and radical change to the process.