Evidence-guided optimization of herbal formula Cheong-Hwa-Bo-Um-Tang using multiplex cytokine profiling

Background: Cheong-Hwa-Bo-Um-Tang (CHB) has been traditionally used to treat pharyngolaryngitis and throat inflammation in Korea. However, the anti-inflammatory activity of CHB and the exact component proportion ratio of CHB have not been fully reported.Materials and Methods: This study was conducted to optimize the component proportion ratio of CHB on the basis of experimental evidence using multiplex cytokine profiling assay in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 mouse macrophages.Results: The optimized CHB (named Chunhwabun-Cheong-Hwa-Bo-Um-Tang) inhibited the production of NO, IL-6, MCP-1, GMCSF, IL-10, IP-10, VEGF, M-CSF, RANTES, MIP-1β, LIF, LIX, and TNF-α in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 mouse macrophages without decreasing cell viability (P<0.05). Chunhwabun-Cheong-Hwa-Bo-Um-Tang consisted of roots of Scrophularia buergeriana, Trichosanthes kirilowii, Anemarrhena asphodeloides, Phellodendron amurense, Angelica gigas, Rehmannia glutinosa, Paeonia japonica, Cnidium officinale, and Glycyrrhiza uralensis (in the ratio of 8: 3: 3: 3: 3: 4: 4: 3: 3).Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the multiplex cytokine profiling assay could be one of the effective methods for evidence-guided optimization of the component proportion ratio of a traditional herbal formula used for treating excessive inflammation such as the cytokine storm.Key words: Cheong-Hwa-Bo-Um-Tang; Lipopolysaccharide; Inflammation; Macrophages; Cytokine; Nitric Oxid

An Exploratory Study on the Association Between Social Capital and Self-Rated Health of South Korean Women with Disabilities

The purpose of this chapter was to explore the relationship between social capital and self-rated health status as assessed in the activities of the everyday life of South Korean women with disabilities. For this purpose, the authors analyzed the 8th data of the panel survey of employment for the disabled (PSED) that included a sample of 275 women with disabilities who are paid worker. The authors found that working environment, working hours, personal development possibilities, communication-and interpersonal-relationships, the fairness of performance assessment, welfare benefits, training opportunities, and job satisfaction differed significantly in relation to the self-rated health status of women with disabilities. The authors also found that for working hours, communication, and interpersonal relationships, significantly higher self-rated health status was found for satisfied compared to the satisfaction group. For personal development possibilities, welfare benefits, and training opportunities, self-rated health status was significantly higher for the satisfaction group than the dissatisfied group. For fairness of the performance assessment, self-rated health status of the satisfaction group was significantly higher than in the dissatisfied and the normal group. Therefore, in order to improve the self-rated health of South Korean women with disabilities, it is necessary to provide working environment considering their disability characteristics and various training opportunities in their workplace

PD-1 deficiency protects experimental colitis via alteration of gut microbiota

Programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) is a coinhibitory molecule and plays a pivotal role in immune regulation. Here, we demonstrate a role for PD-1 in pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Wild-type (WT) mice had severe wasting disease during experimentally induced colitis, while mice deficient for PD-1 (PD-1(-/-)) did not develop colon inflammation. Interestingly, PD-1(-/-) mice cohoused with WT mice became susceptible to colitis, suggesting that resistance of PD-1(-/-) mice to colitis is dependent on their gut microbiota. 16S rRNA gene-pyrosequencing analysis showed that PD-1(-/-) mice had altered composition of gut microbiota with significant reduction in Rikenellaceae family. These altered colon bacteria of PD-1(-/-) mice induced less amount of inflammatory mediators from colon epithelial cells, including interleukin (IL)-6, and inflammatory chemokines. Taken together, our study indicates that PD-1 expression is involved in the resistance to experimental colitis through altered bacterial communities of colon.112Ysciescopuskc

Accelerating Large-Scale Graph-based Nearest Neighbor Search on a Computational Storage Platform

K-nearest neighbor search is one of the fundamental tasks in various applications and the hierarchical navigable small world (HNSW) has recently drawn attention in large-scale cloud services, as it easily scales up the database while offering fast search. On the other hand, a computational storage device (CSD) that combines programmable logic and storage modules on a single board becomes popular to address the data bandwidth bottleneck of modern computing systems. In this paper, we propose a computational storage platform that can accelerate a large-scale graph-based nearest neighbor search algorithm based on SmartSSD CSD. To this end, we modify the algorithm more amenable on the hardware and implement two types of accelerators using HLS- and RTL-based methodology with various optimization methods. In addition, we scale up the proposed platform to have 4 SmartSSDs and apply graph parallelism to boost the system performance further. As a result, the proposed computational storage platform achieves 75.59 query per second throughput for the SIFT1B dataset at 258.66W power dissipation, which is 12.83x and 17.91x faster and 10.43x and 24.33x more energy efficient than the conventional CPU-based and GPU-based server platform, respectively. With multi-terabyte storage and custom acceleration capability, we believe that the proposed computational storage platform is a promising solution for cost-sensitive cloud datacenters.Comment: Extension of FCCM 20201 and Accepted in Transaction on Computer

Colonial Research on Public Hygiene and its Postcolonial Legacy: Focusing on Hygiene Laboratory in Colonial Korea

Previous studies on the history of Korean public health have shown that the public hygiene system in Korea under Japan’s colonial rule relied heavily on the sanitary police, whose lack of expertise in hygiene reinforced the coercion and violence of the colonial public hygiene system. This view, however, has overlooked the existence and function of scientific knowledge, which underpinned the formulation and implementation of public hygiene policies. This paper explores the knowledge production in public hygiene by research institutes of Japan’s colonial government in Korea, drawing on the Hygiene Laboratory as a case. The Hygiene Laboratory chiefly played three roles: first, providing advice on the sanitary police’s crackdowns; second, quality inspection of food, beverage, and pharmaceuticals, and authorizing their production and distribution; third, investigating health resources such as conventional food ingredients, medicinal herbs, and drinking water to support the wartime public health policy of the colonial government in Korea. The third function in particular continued after the reorganization of the Hygiene Laboratory as the National Chemistry Laboratory in the postcolonial period. By tracing the Hygiene Laboratory’s research activities, this paper highlights the complicated cooperation between expertise, practices, and institutions in the field of sanitation control in colonial Korea