Metabolic Benefits of Plant-based N-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids on Brown Thermogenesis

There are two essential fatty acids for humans, a-linolenic acid (ALA) and linoleic acid (LA), which should be taken from foods to maintain health. Once incorporated into cells, ALA and LA, which are omega-3 poly unsaturated fatty acid (n-3 PUFA) and n-6 PUFA respectively, undergo elongation and desaturation to generate longer and more unsaturated fatty acids influencing inflammation and immunological responses. Numerous studies showed a dietary reduction of n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio improves cardiovascular health, inflammation, and insulin resistance. Fish oil, the main resource for n-3 PUFA, is shown to increase these health benefits. In our lab, we investigated the efficacy of ALA-enriched butter (n3Bu) as an alternative to fish oil for n-3 PUFA. n3Bu-fed mice showed increased bioconversion of ALA to long-chain n-3 PUFA (LC n-3 PUFA) and attenuated high fat (HF) diet-induced insulin resistance and inflammation. Besides, these health benefits, n-3 PUFA is shown to improve obesity and its related diseases by regulating lipid metabolism in both white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT). Fish oil abundant with n-3 PUFA promotes BAT formation and increases its thermogenic activity in cold acclimation. However, the impact of ALA-enriched agricultural products on the BAT function is unknown. In this study, we investigated the effect of ALA-biofortified butter (n3Bu) on lipid metabolism and thermogenic functions in BAT. Intake of n3Bu significantly reduced the whitening of BAT and increased the thermogenesis in response to acute-cold treatment. Consumption of n3Bu promoted bioconversion of LC n-3 PUFA, fatty acid elongation and desaturation, and mitochondrial biogenesis. Taken together, our results support that ALA-biofortified butter is a novel source of n-3 PUFA that potentiates the BAT thermogenic function. Advisor: Sathish Kumar Nataraja

Discovering the Effectiveness of Pre-Training in a Large-scale Car-sharing Platform

Recent progress of deep learning has empowered various intelligent transportation applications, especially in car-sharing platforms. While the traditional operations of the car-sharing service highly relied on human engagements in fleet management, modern car-sharing platforms let users upload car images before and after their use to inspect the cars without a physical visit. To automate the aforementioned inspection task, prior approaches utilized deep neural networks. They commonly employed pre-training, a de-facto technique to establish an effective model under the limited number of labeled datasets. As candidate practitioners who deal with car images would presumably get suffered from the lack of a labeled dataset, we analyzed a sophisticated analogy into the effectiveness of pre-training is important. However, prior studies primarily shed a little spotlight on the effectiveness of pre-training. Motivated by the aforementioned lack of analysis, our study proposes a series of analyses to unveil the effectiveness of various pre-training methods in image recognition tasks at the car-sharing platform. We set two real-world image recognition tasks in the car-sharing platform in a live service, established them under the many-shot and few-shot problem settings, and scrutinized which pre-training method accomplishes the most effective performance in which setting. Furthermore, we analyzed how does the pre-training and fine-tuning convey different knowledge to the neural networks for a precise understanding

Toxicological Evaluations of Rare Earths and Their Health Impacts to Workers: A Literature Review

In concert with the development of new materials in the last decade, the need for toxicological studies of these materials has been increasing. These new materials include a group of rare earths (RE). The use of RE nanotechnology is being considered in some green applications, to increase their efficiency by using nano-sized RE compounds, and therefore hazard evaluation and risk assessment are highly recommended. This review was conducted through an extensive contemplation of the literatures in toxicology with in vitro and in vivo studies. Major aspects reviewed were the toxicological evaluations of these elements and metallic compounds at the molecular and cellular level, animal and human epidemiological studies and environmental and occupational health impacts on workers. We also discuss the future prospect of industries with appliances using RE together with the significance of preventive efforts for workers’ health. To establish a safe and healthy working environment for RE industries, the use of biomarkers is increasing to provide sustainable measure, due to demand for information about the health risks from unfavorable exposures. Given the recent toxicological results on the exposure of cells, animals and workers to RE compounds, it is important to review the toxicological studies to improve the current understanding of the RE compounds in the field of occupational health. This will help to establish a sustainable, safe and healthy working environment for RE industries

Li-Fi based on security cloud framework for future IT environment

This study was supported by the Research Program funded by the SeoulTech (Seoul National University of Science and Technology).Peer reviewedPublisher PD