Hallyu and the Traditional Cultural Genes of Korea

Since the year 2000, South Korea has been the propagator of the Hallyu (Korean Wave) that has spread across the world, demonstrating the country’s cultural potential. The subject of Hallyu can be approached from several perspectives, first by identifying its origins, current status, and trends by genre; by looking at its effects and the measures that can sustain the Hallyu phenomenon; and also by examining Hallyu trends by country. This paper analyzes Korea’s traditional cultural genes that affected the creation and spread of Hallyu from a humanistic point of view. The three factors for this analysis are: i) community and courtesy, ii) dynamics and excitement, and iii) intuition and harmony. This study is expected to deepen the understanding of the relation between Hallyu and Korean traditional cultural resources

Multiphoton tissue imaging by using moxifloxacin

Multiphoton microscopy has been widely used for in-vivo tissue imaging of various biological studies. However, its application to clinical studies has been limited due to either lack of clinically compatible exogenous contrast agents or weak autofluorescence of tissues. We investigated moxifloxacin as a contrast agent of cells for multiphoton tissue imaging. Moxifloxacin is an FDA approved antibiotic with relatively good pharmacokinetic properties for tissue penetration and intrinsic fluorescence. Two-photon microscopy (TPM) of moxifloxacin treated mouse corneas showed good tissue penetration and high concentration inside the corneal cells [1]. Cell labeling of moxifloxacin was tested in both cultured cells and isolated immune cells. Moxifloxacin tissue applications were tested in various mouse organs such as the skin, small intestine, and brain. Most of tissues were labeled well via topical administration, and only the skin required additional gentle removal of the outermost stratum corneum by tape stripping. TPM of these tissues showed non-specific cell labeling of moxifloxacin and fluorescence enhancement [2]. Although most of experimental results were from mouse tissues, its clinical application would be possible. Clinical application is promising since imaging based on moxifloxacin labeling could be 10 times faster than imaging based on endogenous fluorescence. Moxifloxacin labeling of cultured cells was demonstrated by comparing TPM images with and without moxifloxacin treatment. Bright fluorescence inside cells were observed only with moxifloxacin at the same imaging condition. TPM of the skin dermis visualized many dermal cells with increased fluorescence, and TPM of the villus in the small intestine showed the covering epithelial cells and cells inside the villus clearly. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Facial recognition patterns of children and adults looking at robotic faces

The present study investigates whether adults and children exhibit different eye‐fixation patterns when they look at human faces, machinelike robotic faces, and humanlike robotic faces. The results from two betweensubject experiments showed that children and adults did have different facial recognition patterns; children tended to fixate more on the mouth of both machinelike and humanlike robotic faces than they do on human faces, while adults focused more on the eyes. The implications of notable findings and the limitations of the experiment are discussed

Development of an extension of GeoServer for handling 3D spatial data

Recently, several open source software tools such as CesiumJS and iTowns have been developed for dealing with 3-dimensional spatial data. These tools mainly focus on visualization of 3D spatial data based on WebGL. An open-sourced server capable of storing, sharing and querying 3D spatial data has not yet been developed. GeoServer, one of the representative open source spatial data servers, provides many powerful features. In particular, it supports connecting to and publishing spatial data from a variety of data sources. GeoServer also supports Web Feature Service (WFS), which is a standard protocol established by the Open Geospatial Consortium to request geospatial feature data. However, GeoServer provides functions only for two-dimensional geometry, so it provides few functions for handling 3D spatial data. Because JTS Topology Suite, which is an important component of GeoServer, does not support 3D spatial operations, it also does not support solid geometries. In this paper, we discuss extension modules of GeoServer that we have implemented to handle 3D spatial data. First, instead of JTS, our modules adopted a geometry model based on the ISO 19107 standard and support 3D spatial operations from the Simple Feature CGAL library. Based on this geometry model, we have implemented new internal data structures that represent spatial information from the Feature interface in GeoServer. Second, we also extended the DataStore module to handle and store 3D spatial information for several data sources such as GeoJSON, GML and PostGIS. Finally, we extended the WFS module to share 3D spatial data via GeoServer

Insight into highly conserved H1 subtype-specific epitopes in influenza virus hemagglutinin

Influenza viruses continuously undergo antigenic changes with gradual accumulation of mutations in hemagglutinin (HA) that is a major determinant in subtype specificity. The identification of conserved epitopes within specific HA subtypes gives an important clue for developing new vaccines and diagnostics. We produced and characterized nine monoclonal antibodies that showed significant neutralizing activities against H1 subtype influenza viruses, and determined the complex structure of HA derived from a 2009 pandemic virus A/Korea/01/2009 (KR01) and the Fab fragment from H1-specific monoclonal antibody GC0587. The overall structure of the complex was essentially identical to the previously determined KR01 HA-Fab0757 complex structure. Both Fab0587 and Fab0757 recognize readily accessible head regions of HA, revealing broadly shared and conserved antigenic determinants among H1 subtypes. The beta-strands constituted by Ser110-Glu115 and Lys169-Lys170 form H1 epitopes with distinct conformations from those of H1 and H3 HA sites. In particular, Glu112, Glu115, Lys169, and Lys171 that are highly conserved among H1 subtype HAs have close contacts with HCDR3 and LCDR3. The differences between Fab0587 and Fab0757 complexes reside mainly in HCDR3 and LCDR3, providing distinct antigenic determinants specific for 1918 pdm influenza strain. Our results demonstrate a potential key neutralizing epitope important for H1 subtype specificity in influenza virus

In vivo fluorescence imaging of conjunctival goblet cells

Conjunctival goblet cells (GCs) are specialized epithelial cells that secrete mucins onto the ocular surface to maintain the wet environment. Assessment of GCs is important because various ocular surface diseases are associated with their loss. Although there are GC assessment methods available, the current methods are either invasive or difficult to use. In this report, we developed a simple and non-invasive GC assessment method based on fluorescence imaging. Moxifloxacin ophthalmic solution was used to label GCs via topical administration, and then various fluorescence microscopies could image GCs in high contrasts. Fluorescence imaging of GCs in the mouse conjunctiva was confirmed by both confocal reflection microscopy and histology with Periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) labeling. Real-time in-vivo conjunctival GC imaging was demonstrated in a rat model by using both confocal fluorescence microscopy and simple wide-field fluorescence microscopy. Different GC densities were observed in the forniceal and bulbar conjunctivas of the rat eye. Moxifloxacin based fluorescence imaging provides high-contrast images of conjunctival GCs non-invasively and could be useful for the study or diagnosis of GC related ocular surface diseases.11Ysciescopu

Drug-induced liver injury: present and future

Liver injury due to prescription and nonprescription medications is a growing medical, scientific, and public health problem. Worldwide, the estimated annual incidence rate of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is 13.9-24.0 per 100,000 inhabitants. DILI is one of the leading causes of acute liver failure in the US. In Korea, the annual extrapolated incidence of cases hospitalized at university hospital is 12/100,000 persons/year. Most cases of DILI are the result of idiosyncratic metabolic responses or unexpected reactions to medication. There is marked geographic variation in relevant agents; antibiotics, anticonvulsants, and psychotropic drugs are the most common offending agents in the West, whereas in Asia, 'herbs' and 'health foods or dietary supplements' are more common. Different medical circumstances also cause discrepancy in definition and classification of DILI between West and Asia. In the concern of causality assessment, the application of the Roussel Uclaf Causality Assessment Method (RUCAM) scale frequently undercounts the cases caused by 'herbs' due to a lack of previous information and incompatible time criteria. Therefore, a more objective and reproducible tool that could be used for the diagnosis of DILI caused by 'herbs' is needed in Asia. In addition, a reporting system similar to the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) in the US should be established as soon as possible in Asia

Automatic classification using concept knowledge of web documents

In order to classify web documents, we suggest a method using concept knowledge of category.In our study, the concept relations between keywords are extracted using hyperlink information and after the extracted keywords are classified into each category, these are used as an index.Then TFIDF for each category is extended to determine index weight value.The system is constructed for experimenting and estimating,which is consist of web robot, indexer, concept knowledge database for each category and the document classifier.Our system to be applied the extended TFIDF method shows an accuracy of 88% in automatic classifying of web documents