Earticle

In this paper, we propose a self-health diagnosis system based on Korea Traditional Medicine that has thousand years of history and popular in Korean general public. The system requires constructing a reliable diseases-symptoms database and classification learning method. Database construction is based on various reports submitted to the government about “Diseases burdensome to Korean Patients” in 2005 and medical contents “Engel Pharm” with 60 diseases. An enhanced ART2 algorithm that has dynamic control of boundary variables to control the number of clusters inside is used to extract top five most probable diseases generated by simple user input. The constructed database and test diagnosis results are verified by Korean Traditional medical doctors and the experiment also shows that the system is easily accessible and reliable in accuracy.

Asterias amurensis, also referred to as the Northern Pacific seastar, is so indiscriminate a predator that it deserves to be called pirates of the sea. They usually eat fish and shellfish including abalones and clams. Due to the high fertility rate, Asterias amurensis is one of the main culprits in devastating fishing grounds. Starfish are anywhere in the East Sea and South Sea. In recent years, however, their number has sharply increased in the West Sea. This paper aims to recognize and extract deformed Asterias amurensis through the use of the concave and convex feature points, central moment, and short lines and long lines. Another purpose of this paper is to restore Asterias amurensis using the radial symmetry. Marked by the characteristics that include pentaradiality and the ability to vary in outward shapes according to circumstances, Asterias amurensis is hard to recognize. With this in mind, this paper propose a simple method for improve rates of recognition of starfish. It will not be long before the restoration method proposed in this paper is of great help in eradicating Asterias amurensis.

Interleukin-25 (IL–17E) is a novel Th2 pro-inflammatory cytokine belongs to the member of IL–17 cytokine family. In the present study, bioactive recombinant human IL–25 (rhIL–25), the cDNA of mature IL–25 was synthesized using nested PCR and codon bias of prokaryotic host Escherichia coli. The desired template was cloned into the MCS region of expression vector pET28a+. The recombinant vector was transformed into maintenance host Escherichia coli DH5α and the transformants were selected by kanamycin resistance marker. Expression was carried out using IPTG inducible Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) in different media like LB, terrific broth and M9 media. Among all, terrific broth was used for the enhanced production of rhIL–25. SDS–PAGE analysis shows 31 kDa proteins against low molecular weight protein marker. Refolding of inclusion bodies with denaturation buffer (25 mM Tris–HCl [pH 7.2], 5 M Urea, 20 mM β–ME and 200 mM NaCl) yields the rhIL–25 at a concentration of ~ 86 mg/L at 37 0C, where it is high when compared with the expression at 20 0C (~ 16.5 mg/L). Western blot analysis was carried out using anti human IL–17E/IL–25 antibodies. Biological activity of rhIL–25 was determined by the release of IL–6 from PBMC cells. For the first time, under the conditions of current good manufacturing practice (cGMP), bioactive recombinant IL–25 was produced at large scale in soluble form using industrially feasible bacterial host Escherichia coli BL21(DE3).

This study was investigated to evaluate that influence career stress, department satisfaction, and psychological state among dental hygiene students. This cross-sectional questionnaire research was conducted with 365 dental hygiene students in Busan and Ulsan from March and May 2013. Data analysis was performed with frequent analysis, t-test, ANOVA, correlation analysis using the SPSS ver. 21. According to the result, mothly income and the career aptitude and career related characteristics associated with career stress, department satisfaction, and psychological effects on the state insane. There is a positive correlation between career stress and SCL-90-R (p<.01), and a negative correlation between department satisfaction and SCL-90-R (p<.05, p<.001). Thus, psychological and social support will need for students belonging to families in need. It is also necessary to activate various counseling programs with experts in seeking career guidance and counseling.

The study was performed between March and June 2013 using students currently enrolled in a comprehensive dental hygiene care course. They were informed of the purpose of the study, underwent an oral cavity examination, and completed the self-administered questionnaire. The study produced the following results. To conclude, the oral health-related quality of life of university students is shown to be related to oral-health satisfaction and agreed with the objective oral health indices. Such results may have a positive influence on middle- and long-term oral care. It is necessary to increase the number of university students who benefit from the promotion of oral-health maintenance and periodic dental-hygiene care programs. Regarding oral-health related quality of life, pain, psychological discomfort, and social defects and impairment areas, students also had a tendency to score high marks. All these variables presented a significant difference between sexes. Concerning the state of oral environments, the causes of caries, and the level of oral-health satisfaction that affects the oral health-related quality of life, oral health satisfaction and intake of sugar-containing foods demonstrated a significant influence

Protein structure prediction has matured over the past few years to the point that even fully automated methods can provide reasonably accurate three-dimensional models of protein structures. However, until now it has not been possible to develop programs able to perform as well as human experts, who are still capable of systematically producing better models than automated servers. In this paper, we review and compare two recently developed and publicly available software packages, LOMETS and I-TASSER, for predicting protein structure in comparison with the commercial software package (Hyper Chem Release 8.0). These two software packages share some common features and also have some fundamental difference. Based on our experience, I-TASSER is more accurate in predicting protein structure. In contrast, LOMETS shows less performance than I-TASSER.

This study aimed to examine the effects of closed kinetic chain exercise using electromyography (EMG) biofeedback for selective strengthening of the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) on patllofemoral joint pain and functional characteristics of patllofemoral joint muscles. The subjects of this study were 30 patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) patients and they were equally and randomly assigned to a control group (I), a closed kinetic chain exercise group (II), and an EMG biofeedback closed kinetic chain exercise (III). They received intervention three times per week (for 30 minutes per each time) for six weeks. Measurement methods included visual analogue scale (VAS) and EMG. According to the study result, there were significant differences in groups II and III compared to group I in VAS (p<.01). During a squat position, there were significant differences in groups II and III compared to group I in median frequency (MDF) and VMO/vastus lateralis (VL) muscle activity ratios (p<.05). According to the this study result, PFPS patients’ muscle functions improved by enhancing muscle control and response ability using EMG biofeedback with which real-time bioinformation on the muscles is provided during closed kinetic chain exercise in order to raise treatment efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to develop an empirical model for the health improvement of patients with thyroidectomy. Subjects of this study were patients who visited general surgery in K general hospital from January 7 to July 8, 2013. As a results, the present research showed that the mean score of stress control after intervention decreased significantly than subjects(t=2.91, p=.038) before the intervention. Secondly, the present research showed that the performance ability rate of thyroidectomy can be increased to 52.7-68.4% by the intervention. The paper will contribute to the model of therapeutic lifestyle change program by the health promotion program’s thyroidectomy patients and indicate the direction of their health promotion program adoption in the future.

The aim of this in vivo experimental study is to determine the association between ultrasound exposure time and rabbit fetal weight. A total of 14 pregnant does were exposed to ultrasound heating for 30, 60, and 90 minutes of ultrasound exposure at their middle of each gestational stage, while another 4 pregnant does served as control. Total of 136 fetuses (1st stage, n=34 (25%); 2nd stage, n=28 (20.6%); 3rd stage, n=74 (54.4%)) were analyzed for fetal body weight. There were significant differences in fetal weight at all stages (p<0.05; 95% CI do not cross 0) of all groups at different length of exposure time. There were also negative correlation between groups with different exposure durations and fetal weight in the 1st and the 3rd stage (p<0.05; r = -0.40, p<0.05; r = -0.23 respectively). Exposure time was found poorly associated with fetal weight in the 1st and the 3rd stage (p<0.05; r2 = 0.15 and 0.04 respectively). This study suggests the heating effect of ultrasound exposure might act as a noxious agent that promotes intrauterine growth restriction in developing fetus that might consequently impacts the rabbit fetal weight. Therefore a considerably increase in awareness of negligible effects aroused from prenatal ultrasound exposure was concerned as it was widely applied to pregnant women.

Chest radiography which is the most common imaging method for lung is difficult to distinguish the lung vessels and nodules due to characteristics of representing the chest in a single image and shading occurred by organs. Computed Tomography(CT) scan has excellent lung nodule detection sensitivity because it produces chest images as volume data, but it has a large amount of exposure dose and is expensive. Chest tomosynthesis which generates volume data through continuous shooting comes to the forefront as an early lung cancer screening method with high lung nodule detection sensitivity than chest radiography and low-dose than CT image. However, chest tomosynthesis is difficult to have computer-based automatic segmentation because of blurring occurred while generating the image. Therefore, we propose prediction-based segmentation improvement method based on the central slices with less blurring after performing lung segmentation using region-growing. Using the proposed method, it is to improve the lung segmentation performance by improving the incorrect segmentation results on the outer slices where many blurring occurs. The experiment results showed the improvement of incorrectly segmented lung region.

Wireless Medical Sensor Networks and Radio Frequency Identification has been widely adopted in both medical and healthcare industry. This paper deals with the study of a WMSN and RFID based u-Healthcare system. An efficient framework for a u-Healthcare system utilizing RFID and WMSN has been presented. The system is capable of monitoring the patient’s medical status by using RFID body sensor and wirelessly transmits the medical data to a local workstation (WMSN gateway) before transmitting it to the central database server. Due to the patient’s movements, WMSN node’s movements will be patterned with the functionality of the Mobile IPv6.

Medical data analysis from different medical image sensor has been increased in medical field. The image fusion techniques which are the efficient way of adding and improving medical imaging information have drawn increasing concentration from the medical society. In this paper, we proposed a new scheme of Neighbouring Pixel Selection (NPS) fusion rule for laplacian pyramidal multiscale decomposition-based fusion of medical images considering the consistency verification of both intrascale and interscale parameters. A combining set of coefficients from the Multiscale Representations (MSR) of the source images is computed by utilization of neighborhood information. An efficient fusion scheme is also proposed for different modalities. Experimental results show that proposed method produces better results than the existing methods.

A variety of security and privacy threats to RFID authentication protocols with embedded healthcare system have been widely studied. The representative vulnerabilities include eavesdropping, replay attacks, denial of service attacks, tracking, and traceability. Considering this RFID security issues, we analyzed the security threats and open problems related to these matters. In ubiquitous system with sensor node, we use small and limited resources and low memory. Then the application with these kinds of have lots of vulnerabilities and attacks such RFID protocol in healthcare system. Even though, concerns about the disclosure of personal medical privacy in e-healthcare system have already appeared. In this paper, we analyzed and compared practical threat on U-healthcare system.

The purpose of this study is verifying the effectiveness of balance as a tool to correct a youth's wrong gait posture through comparative analysis of balance and gait among the youth group of normal-weight, overweight and obesity, and studying of the comparison of balance and gait with degree of obesity (Body Mass Index: BMI) and biomechanical gait analysis. There was a statistically significant difference in stability test items (p <.05). In a step width obese adolescent statistically significant difference (p < 0.001) was found. As the step width is one of gait factors, obese and overweight adolescent has large step width compare to normal adolescents. These results suggest the view, obese adolescents compared to normal weight adolescents lack balance, and step width is wider. When balance is better, step width and obesity level are reduced. When step width is shorter, the obesity level is lower. As a result, if the balance is better, the gaits close to how normal weight adolescents walk, because, in conclusion, if balance improves the gait will be corrected.

The purpose of this paper is introduces blood warmer system to easy for anesthesiologists and patients for infusion and facilitate of anesthesiologists work for using blood bag. The system is contained in a rectangular box, inside of which consists of two separate chambers: one housing the electronics inside have; circulating fans, heat sinks, transformer (12v, 100w, 8.3amp) and a PCB with an SG3525 IC for regulation of temperatures in the adjacent chamber and the other the blood warming components inside have is fitted with a shaker, EPDM(Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer) cushion sheets, a digital thermometer, and two thermo-sensor. Two peltiers and EPDM cushion sheets are employed in the proposed system to quicken the warming of blood bags. Nonetheless, three experiments were conducted with three different blood warming configurations: using one peltier without the EPDM cushion sheets, two peltiers without the EPDM cushion sheets, and two peltiers with the EPDM cushion sheets. The finding indicates that the use of two peltiers together with the plates produces the best results.

This study aimed to examine changes in pain over time through quantitative sensory testing (QST) when delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) was artificially induced on the non-dominant biceps brachii. Thirty-three healthy males to whom DOMS was induced through eccentric exercise among those who participated in this study were randomly assigned to group 1 (sham taping, n=17) and group II (kinesio taping, n=16). Kinesio taping was applied in the same driving direction as that of muscle fibers. QST was measured at four time points (prior to DOMS induction, 24 hours after DOMS induction, 48 hours after DOMS induction, and 72 hours after DOMS induction) and there were significant differences in cold pain threshold (CPT), warm pain threshold (WPT), and cold sensation threshold (CST) 24 hours after DOMS induction (p<0.05) and 48 hours after DOMS induction (p<0.05) compared to prior to DOMS induction. The threshold values of group II to whom kinesio taping was applied did not significantly differ between prior to DOMS induction and 72 hours after DOMS induction (p>0.05). There were statistically significant differences in CST and WST between the two groups 72 hours or after the intervention (p>0.05). Visual analogue scale (VAS) that represents subjective pain degree according to time of measurement was measured; VAS started to increase 24 hours after DOMS induction and became largest 48 hours after DOMS induction. Pain statistically significantly decreased 72 hours after DOMS induction relative to 24 hours after DOMS induction (p<0.05). The effects of Kinesio taping on decrease in DOMS according to measured time were examined through QST and its usefulness was verified.

This study was a descriptive correlation study to increase understanding of, and relationship among job satisfaction, critical thinking disposition and clinical competence of dental hygienists. Survey were undertake by dental hygienists working at the dental clinics located in B City from May 2012 to January 2013. A total of 176 questionnaires, excluding 24 incomplete ones, were analyzed. The influencing factors on clinical competence of dental hygieneists, it appeared that there were positive correlations between critical thinking, job satisfaction. It appeared that the higher the critical thinking, the higher the decision making ability, and the higher the job satisfaction, the more those factors affected the clinical competence. The result of this study indicate confirm that critical thinking and job satisfaction should be considered in order to improve the clinical competence of dental hygieneists, This study suggests an attempt at intergrated education for the qualitative improvement of clinical dental hygiene services and the revitalization of such a program.

The image fusion is the process of combining relevant information from two or more images into a single image. The resulting image will be more informative than any of the input images. A new approach for object extraction from high-resolution images is presented in this report. In this paper, we have presented image fusion based on wavelet transform.

The purpose of this study was to analyze QOL among middle aged and elderly women participating in health dance exercise. This study used a cross-sectional survey design. The data collected from 192 women during August to September in 2013 using a questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed using frequency, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Correlation and multiple regression with the SPSS 21.0. Mean scores for BMI, body image, self-esteem, psychological happiness, leisure satisfaction and QOL were 22.1, 3.02 (5-point scale), 2.80 (4-point scale), 3.39 (5-point scale), 3.75 (5-point scale), and 3.47 (5-point scale) respectively. Self-esteem, health status, marital status and psychological happiness accounted for 53.4% of the variance in quality of life among those participating in health dance exercise. To promote the QOL of women participating in health dance exercise, self-esteem, health status, marital status and psychological happiness should be considered as important factors.

Volatile components in the root peels, stem peels, and fruit peels of pomegranate (Punica granatum) were analyzed by thermal desorption gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TD GC/MS). Twenty-four compounds including 17 hydrocarbons, 1 aldehyde, 1 ketone, 2 heterocyclics, and 3 others were identified in the root peels. Thirty compounds including 5 hydrocarbons, 8 alcohols, 3 aldehydes, 2 ketones, 11 esters, and 1 other were identified in the stem peels. Sixty-two compounds including 10 hydrocarbons, 18 alcohols, 6 aldehydes, 4 ketones, 1 carboxylic acid, 17 esters, 1 heterocyclic, and 5 others were identified in the fruit peels. Monoterpene hydrocarbons such as α-pinene (13.49%), 2-β-pinene (16.31%), δ-3-carene (22.94%), and dl-limonene (17.33%) were found to be the major volatile compounds in the root peels. The main volatile compound in the stem peels and fruit peels was ethanol of alcohol, which represented 40.76% and 42.12% of the total concentration of volatiles, respectively. Other compounds dominating the stem peels and fruit peels were all acetic acids and ethyl ester of ester, which represented 21.29% and 19.59% of the total concentration of volatiles, respectively.