Strategy for the Cultural Contents Industry to Secure Competitive Advantage Using Fourth Industrial Revolution Technology

With the coming of the fourth industrial revolution, cultural contents industry requires a new strategy to enhance its competitive advantages. As a result, governments and companies have been focusing their efforts on finding new business models and expanding the value chain in order to respond to the paradigm shift in a timely manner. This study aims to suggest new business model frameworks and strategies to create a paradigm shift by converging the characteristics of the fourth industrial revolution and cultural contents industry such as publishing, game, broadcasting, and character industry. First, we discuss how to upgrade cultural contents industry with the fourth industrial revolution technology and then suggest new contents business models and the change of value chain in the cultural contents industry. Finally, we consider strategies of innovation process development in the cultural contents industry. This study will contribute not only to economic policy-making but also to the business strategy of the company

A simple iterative independent component analysis algorithm for vibration source signal identification of complex structures

ABSTRACT:Independent Component Analysis (ICA), one of the blind source separation methods, can be applied for extracting unknown source signals only from received signals. This is accomplished by finding statistical independence of signal mixtures and has been successfully applied to myriad fields such as medical science, image processing, and numerous others. Nevertheless, there are inherent problems that have been reported when using this technique: insta- bility and invalid ordering of separated signals, particularly when using a conventional ICA technique in vibratory source signal identification of complex structures. In this study, a simple iterative algorithm of the conventional ICA has been proposed to mitigate these problems. The proposed method to extract more stable source signals having valid order includes an iterative and reordering process of extracted mixing matrix to reconstruct finally converged source signals, referring to the magnitudes of correlation coefficients between the intermediately separated signals and the signals measured on or nearby sources. In order to review the problems of the conventional ICA technique and to vali- date the proposed method, numerical analyses have been carried out for a virtual response model and a 30m class submarine model. Moreover, in order to investigate applicability of the proposed method to real problem of complex structure, an experiment has been carried out for a scaled submarine mockup. The results show that the proposed method could resolve the inherent problems of a conventional ICA technique

The mercury-sensitive residue at cysteine 189 in the CHIP28 water channel

Water channels provide the plasma membranes of red cells and renal proximal tubules with high permeability to water, thereby permitting water to move in the direction of an osmotic gradient. Molecular identification of CHIP28 protein as the membrane water channel was first accomplished by measurement of osmotic swelling of Xenopus oocytes injected with CHIP28 RNA (Preston, G.M., Carroll, T.P., Guggino, W.B., and Agre, P. (1992) Science 256, 385-387). Since water channels are pharmacologically inhibited by submillimolar concentrations of Hg2+, site-directed mutagenesis was undertaken to demonstrate which of the 4 cysteines (87, 102, 152, or 189) is the Hg(2+)-sensitive residue in the CHIP28 molecule. Each cysteine was individually replaced by serine, and oocytes expressing each of the four mutants exhibited osmotic water permeability (Pf) equivalent to wild-type CHIP28. After incubation in HgCl2, all were significantly inhibited, except C189S exists as a multisubunit complex in the native membrane; however, although oocytes injected with mixed CHIP28 and C189S RNAs exhibited Pf corresponding to the sum of their individual activities, exposure to Hg2+ only reduced the Pf to the level of the C189S mutant. Of the six substitutions at residue 189, only the serine and alanine mutants exhibited increased Pf and had glycosylation patterns resembling wild-type CHIP28 on immunoblots. These studies demonstrated: (i) CHIP28 water channel activity is retained despite substitution of individual cysteines with serine; (ii) cysteine 189 is the Hg(2+)-sensitive residue; (iii) the subunits of the CHIP28 complex are individually active water pores; (iv) residue 189 is critical to proper processing of the CHIP28 protein

Agaricus blazei Extract Induces Apoptosis through ROS-Dependent JNK Activation Involving the Mitochondrial Pathway and Suppression of Constitutive NF-κB in THP-1 Cells

Agaricus blazei is widely accepted as a traditional medicinal mushroom, and it has been known to exhibit immunostimulatory and anti-cancer activity. However, the apoptotic mechanism in cancer cells is poorly understood. In this study, we have investigated whether A. blazei extract (ABE) exerts antiproliferative and apoptotic effects in human leukemic THP-1 cells. We observed that ABE-induced apoptosis is associated with the mitochondrial pathway, which is mediated by reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and prolonged c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) activation. In addition, the ABE treatment resulted in the accumulation of cytochrome c in the cytoplasm, an increase in caspase activity, and an upregulation of Bax and Bad. With those results in mind, we found that ABE decreases constitutive NF-κB activation and NF-κB-regulated gene products such as IAP-1 and -2. We concluded that ABE induces apoptosis with ROS-dependent JNK activation and constitutive activated NF-κB inhibition in THP-1 cells

Differential effect of NF-κB activity on β-catenin/Tcf pathway in various cancer cells

Abstractβ-Catenin/Tcf and NF-κB pathways play an important role in biological functions. We determined the underlying mechanisms of differential interaction between two pathways in various human cancer cell lines. NF-κB positively regulated β-catenin/Tcf pathways in human glioblastoma, whereas it has an opposite effect on β-catenin/Tcf pathways in colon, liver, and breast cancer cells. Expression of lucine zipper tumor suppressor 2 (lzts2) was positively regulated by NF-κB activity in colon, liver, and breast cancer cells, whereas negatively regulated in glioma cells. Downregulation of lzts2 increased the β-catenin/Tcf promoter activity and inhibited NF-κB-induced modulation of the nuclear translocation of β-catenin. These data indicate that the differential crosstalk between β-catenin/Tcf and NF-κB pathway in various cancer cells is resulted from the differences in the regulation of NF-κB-induced lzts2 expression

Use of Magnetic Nanoparticles to Visualize Threadlike Structures Inside Lymphatic Vessels of Rats

A novel application of fluorescent magnetic nanoparticles was made to visualize a new tissue which had not been detectable by using simple stereomicroscopes. This unfamiliar threadlike structure inside the lymphatic vessels of rats was demonstrated in vivo by injecting nanoparticles into lymph nodes and applying magnetic fields on the collecting lymph vessels so that the nanoparticles were taken up by the threadlike structures. Confocal laser scanning microscope images of cryosectioned specimens exhibited that the nanoparticles were absorbed more strongly by the threadlike structure than by the lymphatic vessels. Further examination using a transmission electron microscope revealed that the nanoparticles had been captured between the reticular fibers in the extracellular matrix of the threadlike structures. The emerging technology of nanoparticles not only allows the extremely elusive threadlike structures to be visualized but also is expected to provide a magnetically controllable means to investigate their physiological functions