Prediction of abundance of arthropods according to climate change scenario RCP 4.5 and 8.5 in South Korea

AbstractAbundance and diversity of arthropods were projected according to climate warming in South Korea. The taxa highly linked with temperature were selected for the projection. The values of abundance and richness were estimated using the mean values of abundance and richness in each temperature range. Temperature changes were based on the RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 4.5 and RCP 8.5, and the abundance and richness during two periods (2011 -2015, 2056 -2065) were projected. From these projected results, change of other common taxa (> 1% occurrence) were qualitatively predicted (i.e., decrease or increase). The projections showed that 45 of a total of 73 taxa will increase, 6 will change a little and 24 will decrease: the number of taxa that were expected to increase was two times more than the number of taxa that were expected to decrease. However, the overall abundance and diversity of arthropods were expected to decline as the temperature rises

The Current State of Artificial Intelligence Application in Urology

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in many areas of healthcare, including disease diagnosis and personalized treatment and rehabilitation management. Medical AI research and development has primarily focused on diagnosis, prediction, treatment, and management as an aid to patient care. AI is being utilized primarily in the areas of personal healthcare and diagnostic imaging. In the field of urology, significant investments are being made in the development of urination monitoring systems in the field of personal healthcare and ureteral stricture and urinary stone diagnosis solutions in the field of diagnostic imaging. In addition, AI technology is also being applied in the field of neurogenic bladder to develop risk monitoring systems based on video and audio data. This paper examines the application of AI to urological diseases and discusses the current trends and future prospects of AI research

Cocoa polyphenols suppress TNF-α-induced vascular endothelial growth factor expression by inhibiting phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase-1 (MEK1) activities in mouse epidermal cells

Cocoa polyphenols have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. TNF-α is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that has a vital role in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases such as cancer and psoriasis. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression is associated with tumorigenesis, CVD, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. We tested whether cocoa polyphenol extract (CPE) inhibited TNF-α-induced VEGF expression in promotion-sensitive JB6 mouse epidermal cells. CPE significantly inhibited TNF-α-induced up-regulation of VEGF via reducing TNF-α-induced activation of the nuclear transcription factors activator protein-1 (AP-1) and NF-κB, which are key regulators of VEGF expression. CPE also inhibited TNF-α-induced phosphorylation of protein kinase B (Akt) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase. CPE blocked activation of their downstream kinases, p70 kDa ribosomal protein S6 kinase and p90 kDa ribosomal protein S6 kinase. CPE suppressed phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) activity via binding PI3K directly. CPE did not affect TNF-α-induced phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase-1 (MEK1) but suppressed TNF-α-induced MEK1 activity. Collectively, these results indicate that CPE reduced TNF-α-induced up-regulation of VEGF by directly inhibiting PI3K and MEK1 activities, which may contribute to its chemopreventive potentia

Artificial Intelligence-Based Patient Monitoring System for Medical Support

Purpose In this paper, we present the development of a monitoring system designed to aid in the management and prevention of conditions related to urination. The system features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based recognition technology that automatically records a user’s urination activity. Additionally, we developed a technology that analyzes movements to prevent neurogenic bladder. Methods Our approach included the creation of AI-based recognition technology that automatically logs users’ urination activities, as well as the development of technology that analyzes movements to prevent neurogenic bladder. Initially, we employed a recurrent neural network model for the urination activity recognition technology. For predicting the risk of neurogenic bladder, we utilized convolutional neural network (CNN)-based AI technology. Results The performance of the proposed system was evaluated using a study population of 30 patients with urinary tract dysfunction, who collected data over a 60-day period. The results demonstrated an average accuracy of 94.2% in recognizing urinary tract activity, thereby confirming the effectiveness of the recognition technology. Furthermore, the motion analysis technology for preventing neurogenic bladder, which also employed CNN-based AI, showed promising results with an average accuracy of 83%. Conclusions In this study, we developed a urination disease monitoring system aimed at predicting and managing risks for patients with urination issues. The system is designed to support the entire care cycle of a patient by leveraging AI technology that processes various image and signal data. We anticipate that this system will evolve into digital treatment products, ultimately providing therapeutic benefits to patients

Kalman Filter-based Data Recovery in Wireless Smart Sensor Network for Infrastructure Monitoring

Extensive research effort has been made during the last decade to utilize wireless smart sensors for evaluating and monitoring structural integrity of civil engineering structures. The wireless smart sensor commonly has sensing and embedded computation capabilities as well as wireless communication that provide strong potential to overcome shortcomings of traditional wired sensor systems such as high equipment and installation cost. However, sensor malfunctioning particularly in case of long-term monitoring and unreliable wireless communication in harsh environment are the critical issues that should be properly tackled for a wider adoption of wireless smart sensors in practice. This study presents a wireless smart sensor network(WSSN) that can estimate unmeasured responses for the purpose of data recovery at unresponsive sensor nodes. A software program that runs on WSSN is developed to estimate the unmeasured responses from the measured using the Kalman filter. The performance of the developed network software is experimentally verified by estimating unmeasured acceleration responses using a simply-supported beam.clos

Surgical castration efficiently delays the time of starting a systemic chemotherapy in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients refractory to initial androgen-deprivation therapy

AbstractBackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the effects of surgical castration, particularly delaying the time to entrance of systemic chemotherapy, in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) patients who were refractory to initial combination androgen deprivation therapy.Materials and methodsWe analyzed the clinical data of 14 CRPC patients diagnosed at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) from November 2008 through May 2015. After exclusion of three patients, we finally analyzed the baseline characteristics of 11 CRPC patients. We also assessed the delaying time of docetaxel administration, which was defined as response duration, after surgical castration.ResultsAfter bilateral orchiectomy, the treatment response rate was 45.4% and the median duration of response was 9 months (range 4–48 mo). Responders had less aggressive biopsy Gleason scores compared to nonresponders. Notably, responders showed the reducing pattern of serum prostate specific antigen levels, while nonresponders demonstrated increasing tendency after surgical castration. Moreover, responders also presented with a reduction pattern of serum testosterone levels, whereas nonresponders showed an increasing pattern of testosterone levels after bilateral orchiectomy.ConclusionsIn summary, despite the limited number of cases for convincing evidence, our results shed light again on the clinical benefits of surgical castration prior to the systemic chemotherapy in some CRPC patients after initial hormone therapy