A Study on Crack Depth Measurement in Steel Structures Using Image-Based Intensity Differences

Jung, Ju-Yeong,Yoon, Hyuk-Jin,Cho, Hyun-Woo Hindawi Limited 2018 Advances in civil engineering Vol.2018 No.-

<P>This paper seeks to propose an image-based noncontact testing method in crack depth measurement. To this end, it predicted the crack depth using the intensity values of cracks and verified its validity. To analyze the intensity values of cracks, eight stainless steel specimens with an increase in crack depths ranging from 0 to 17.5 mm at an average of 2.5 mm were fabricated, and a contrast index was attached to the center of the crack of the specimens painted with black matte spray for accurate analysis. Through various experiments, it was found that the intensity values of the cracks which decrease with the depth of the cracks were inductively formulated, and the average error was about 15% when the crack depth predicted by the empirical equation was compared with the actual crack depth. In addition, the validation of the intensity reduction equation obtained by the inductive method was verified, and it was confirmed that the crack depth can be predicted by the intensity value of the crack.</P>

KCHO-1, a Novel Antineuroinflammatory Agent, Inhibits Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Neuroinflammatory Responses through Nrf2-Mediated Heme Oxygenase-1 Expression in Mouse BV2 Microglia Cells

Lee, Dong-Sung,Ko, Wonmin,Yoon, Chi-Su,Kim, Dong-Cheol,Yun, Jinju,Lee, Jun-Kyung,Jun, Ki-Young,Son, Ilhong,Kim, Dong-Woung,Song, Bong-Keun,Choi, Seulah,Jang, Jun-Hyeog,Oh, Hyuncheol,Kim, Sungchul,Kim, Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014 Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medic Vol.2014 No.-

<P>The brain is vulnerable to oxidative stress and inflammation that can occur as a result of aging or neurodegenerative diseases. Our work has sought to identify natural products that regulate heme oxygenase (HO)-1 and to determine their mechanism of action in neurodegenerative diseases. KCHO-1 is a novel herbal therapeutic containing 30% ethanol (EtOH) extracts from nine plants. In this study, we investigated the antineuroinflammatory effects of KCHO-1 in lipopolysaccharide- (LPS-) treated mouse BV2 microglia. KCHO-1 inhibited the protein expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), iNOS-derived nitric oxide (NO), cyclooxygenase- (COX-) 2, and COX-2-derived prostaglandin E2 (PGE<SUB>2</SUB>) in LPS-stimulated BV2 microglia. It also reduced tumor necrosis factor-<I>α</I> (TNF-<I>α</I>), interleukin-1<I>β</I> (IL-1<I>β</I>), and IL-6 production. This effect was correlated with the suppression of inhibitor of nuclear factor kappa B-<I>α</I> (I<I>κ</I>B-<I>α</I>) phosphorylation and degradation and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-<I>κ</I>B) translocation and DNA binding. Additionally, KCHO-1 upregulated HO-1 expression by promoting nuclear translocation of nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) in mouse BV2 microglia. Tin protoporphyrin (SnPP), an HO activity inhibitor, was used to verify the inhibitory effects of KCHO-1 on proinflammatory mediators and proteins associated with HO-1 expression. Our data suggest that KCHO-1 has therapeutic potential in neurodegenerative diseases caused by neuroinflammation.</P>

Olive Leaf Extract Attenuates Obesity in High-Fat Diet-Fed Mice by Modulating the Expression of Molecules Involved in Adipogenesis and Thermogenesis

Shen, Ying,Song, Su Jin,Keum, Narae,Park, Taesun Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014 Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medic Vol.2014 No.-

<P>The present study aimed to investigate whether olive leaf extract (OLE) prevents high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity in mice and to explore the underlying mechanisms. Mice were randomly divided into groups that received a chow diet (CD), HFD, or 0.15% OLE-supplemented diet (OLD) for 8 weeks. OLD-fed mice showed significantly reduced body weight gain, visceral fat-pad weights, and plasma lipid levels as compared with HFD-fed mice. OLE significantly reversed the HFD-induced upregulation of WNT10b- and galanin-mediated signaling molecules and key adipogenic genes (PPAR<I><I>γ</I></I>, C/EBP<I><I>α</I></I>, CD36, FAS, and leptin) in the epididymal adipose tissue of HFD-fed mice. Furthermore, the HFD-induced downregulation of thermogenic genes involved in uncoupled respiration (SIRT1, PGC1<I><I>α</I></I>, and UCP1) and mitochondrial biogenesis (TFAM, NRF-1, and COX2) was also significantly reversed by OLE. These results suggest that OLE exerts beneficial effects against obesity by regulating the expression of genes involved in adipogenesis and thermogenesis in the visceral adipose tissue of HFD-fed mice.</P>

IoT-Based Smart Garbage System for Efficient Food Waste Management

Hong, Insung,Park, Sunghoi,Lee, Beomseok,Lee, Jaekeun,Jeong, Daebeom,Park, Sehyun Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014 The Scientific World Journal Vol.2014 No.-

<P>Owing to a paradigm shift toward Internet of Things (IoT), researches into IoT services have been conducted in a wide range of fields. As a major application field of IoT, waste management has become one such issue. The absence of efficient waste management has caused serious environmental problems and cost issues. Therefore, in this paper, an IoT-based smart garbage system (SGS) is proposed to reduce the amount of food waste. In an SGS, battery-based smart garbage bins (SGBs) exchange information with each other using wireless mesh networks, and a router and server collect and analyze the information for service provisioning. Furthermore, the SGS includes various IoT techniques considering user convenience and increases the battery lifetime through two types of energy-efficient operations of the SGBs: stand-alone operation and cooperation-based operation. The proposed SGS had been operated as a pilot project in Gangnam district, Seoul, Republic of Korea, for a one-year period. The experiment showed that the average amount of food waste could be reduced by 33%.</P>

An Integrated Gateway for Various PHDs in U-Healthcare Environments

Park, KeeHyun,Pak, JuGeon Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2012 Journal of biomedicine & biotechnology Vol.2012 No.-

<P>We propose an integrated gateway for various personal health devices (PHDs). This gateway receives measurements from various PHDs and conveys them to a remote monitoring server (MS). It provides two kinds of transmission modes: immediate transmission and integrated transmission. The former mode operates if a measurement exceeds a predetermined threshold or in the case of an emergency. In the latter mode, the gateway retains the measurements instead of forwarding them. When the reporting time comes, the gateway extracts all the stored measurements, integrates them into one message, and transmits the integrated message to the MS. Through this mechanism, the transmission overhead can be reduced. On the basis of the proposed gateway, we construct a u-healthcare system comprising an activity monitor, a medication dispenser, and a pulse oximeter. The evaluation results show that the size of separate messages from various PHDs is reduced through the integration process, and the process does not require much time; the integration time is negligible.</P>

Electricity Usage Scheduling in Smart Building Environments Using Smart Devices

Lee, Eunji,Bahn, Hyokyung Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013 The Scientific World Journal Vol.2013 No.-

<P>With the recent advances in smart grid technologies as well as the increasing dissemination of smart meters, the electricity usage of every moment can be detected in modern smart building environments. Thus, the utility company adopts different price of electricity at each time slot considering the peak time. This paper presents a new electricity usage scheduling algorithm for smart buildings that adopts real-time pricing of electricity. The proposed algorithm detects the change of electricity prices by making use of a smart device and changes the power mode of each electric device dynamically. Specifically, we formulate the electricity usage scheduling problem as a real-time task scheduling problem and show that it is a complex search problem that has an exponential time complexity. An efficient heuristic based on genetic algorithms is performed on a smart device to cut down the huge searching space and find a reasonable schedule within a feasible time budget. Experimental results with various building conditions show that the proposed algorithm reduces the electricity charge of a smart building by 25.6% on average and up to 33.4%.</P>

Differential Association of Uncoupling Protein 2 Polymorphisms with Pattern Identification among Korean Stroke Patients: A Diagnostic System in Traditional Korean Medicine

Lim, Ji Hye,Ko, Mi Mi,Lee, Hoyoung,Go, Ho Yeon,Moon, Tae-Woong,Cha, Min Ho,Lee, Myeong Soo Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2012 Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medic Vol.2012 No.-

<P>Uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2), a mitochondrial protein present in many organs and cell types, is known to dissipate the proton gradient formed by the electron transport chain. Its function is correlated with predictive parameters, such as obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. We analyzed the distribution of UCP2 polymorphisms in stroke patients diagnosed with one of the following four stroke subtypes based on the TKM standard pattern identification (PI): Qi-deficiency (QD), Dampness and Phlegm (D&P), Yin-deficiency (YD), and Fire and Heat (F&D). We studied a total of 1,786 stroke patients (397/QD, 645/D&P, 223/YD, and 522/F&D, 586/normal). Genotyping for the G-1957A, G-866A and A55V UCP2 polymorphisms was performed using the TaqMan. G-866A and A55V were significantly associated with the D&P and H&F subtypes. The frequency of subjects with the A allele of G-866A was significantly lower than the frequency of subjects with the GG type. The A55V polymorphism was also shown similar effect with G-866A in the dominant model. In contrast, no SNPs were shown to be associated with the QD or YD subtypes in this study. These results showed that the G-866A and A55V UCP2 polymorphisms may be genetic factors for specific PI types among Korean stroke patients.</P>

Introduction of Bifunctional Group onto MWNT by Radiation-Induced Graft Polymerization and Its Use as Biosensor-Supporting Materials

Lee, Yu-Jin,Chung, Da-Jung,Oh, Sang-Hyub,Choi, Seong-Ho Hindawi Limited 2012 Journal of nanomaterials Vol.2012 No.-

<P>A biosensor comprising<I>tyrosinase</I>immobilized on bifunctionalized multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT) supports was prepared for the detection of phenolic compounds in drinks such as red wine and juices. The MWNT supports were prepared by radiation-induced graft polymerization (RIGP) of epoxy-containing glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), to covalently immobilize the<I>tyrosinase</I>, and vinyl ferrocene (VF), which can act as an electron transfer mediator via redox reactions. The bifunctionalized MWNTs were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Electrodes prepared with the MWNTs showed increased current with increasing VF content. A biosensor comprising<I>tyrosinase</I>immobilized on the bifunctionalized MWNTs could detect phenol at 0.1–20 mM. Phenolics in red wine and juices were determined using the biosensor after its calibration.</P>

Numeric Analysis for Relationship-Aware Scalable Streaming Scheme

Lee, Heung Ki,Jung, Jaehee,Ahn, Kyung Jin,Jeong, Hwa-Young,Yi, Gangman Hindawi Limited 2014 Journal of applied mathematics (JAM) Vol.2014 No.-

<P>Frequent packet loss of media data is a critical problem that degrades the quality of streaming services over mobile networks. Packet loss invalidates frames containing lost packets and other related frames at the same time. Indirect loss caused by losing packets decreases the quality of streaming. A scalable streaming service can decrease the amount of dropped multimedia resulting from a single packet loss. Content providers typically divide one large media stream into several layers through a scalable streaming service and then provide each scalable layer to the user depending on the mobile network. Also, a scalable streaming service makes it possible to decode partial multimedia data depending on the relationship between frames and layers. Therefore, a scalable streaming service provides a way to decrease the wasted multimedia data when one packet is lost. However, the hierarchical structure between frames and layers of scalable streams determines the service quality of the scalable streaming service. Even if whole packets of layers are transmitted successfully, they cannot be decoded as a result of the absence of reference frames and layers. Therefore, the complicated relationship between frames and layers in a scalable stream increases the volume of abandoned layers. For providing a high-quality scalable streaming service, we choose a proper relationship between scalable layers as well as the amount of transmitted multimedia data depending on the network situation. We prove that a simple scalable scheme outperforms a complicated scheme in an error-prone network. We suggest an adaptive set-top box (AdaptiveSTB) to lower the dependency between scalable layers in a scalable stream. Also, we provide a numerical model to obtain the indirect loss of multimedia data and apply it to various multimedia streams. Our AdaptiveSTB enhances the quality of a scalable streaming service by removing indirect loss.</P>

The Korean Mistletoe ( <i>Viscum album coloratum</i> ) Extract Has an Antiobesity Effect and Protects against Hepatic Steatosis in Mice with High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity

Jung, Hoe-Yune,Kim, Yu-Hee,Kim, In-Bo,Jeong, Ju Seong,Lee, Jung-Han,Do, Myoung-Sool,Jung, Seung-Pil,Kim, Kwang-Soo,Kim, Kyong-Tai,Kim, Jong-Bae Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013 Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medic Vol.2013 No.-

<P>This study investigates the inhibitory effects of Korean mistletoe extract (KME) on adipogenic factors in 3T3-L1 cells and obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in mice fed a high-fat diet. Male C57Bl/6 mice fed a high-fat diet were treated with KME (3 g/kg/day) for 15 weeks for the antiobesity and NAFLD experiments. Body weight and daily food intake were measured regularly during the experimental period. The epididymal pad was measured and liver histology was observed. The effects of KME on thermogenesis and endurance capacity were measured. The effects of KME on adipogenic factors were examined in 3T3-L1 cells. Body and epididymal fat pad weights were reduced in KME-treated mice, and histological examination showed an amelioration of fatty liver in KME-treated mice, without an effect on food consumption. KME potently induces mitochondrial activity by activating thermogenesis and improving endurance capacity. KME also inhibited adipogenic factors <I>in vitro</I>. These results demonstrate the inhibitory effects of KME on obesity and NAFLD in mice fed a high-fat diet. The effects appear to be mediated through an enhanced mitochondrial activity. Therefore, KME may be an effective therapeutic candidate for treating obesity and fatty liver caused by a high-fat diet.</P>