Alcoholic fatty liver disorder has become a frequent health concern worldwide. To investigate the effects of Brassica oleracea (B. oleracea) sprout extract (BOE), the present study was designed with alcoholic fatty liver in the rat. Initially, the effects of BOE on liver parameters were examined. Male rats were divided into five groups. The normal control group was fed the normal diet, and the BOE group was fed the high fat diet and ethanol with/without BOE for 4 weeks. After 4 weeks feeding period, rats were sacrificed and their livers and blood were used for fatty liver-related biomarkers analyses. As a result, BOE ameliorated fatty liver-related enzymes profiles in liver tissues and also reduced blood alcohol concentration in rat model. We demonstrated that BOE protected the high fat diet and alcohol-induced fatty liver in rat model. Furthermore, BOE increased detoxificative abilities against alcohol.

Hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (HIRI) is linked with high mortality rate. Several agents have been developed so far to reduce the risk of HIRI. In this study, we investigated the effects of combined treatment of Ginko biloba leaves extract and vitamin C (GLEVC) on hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury. To explore the protective effects of GLEVC on HIRI rats model were tested. After the development of HIRI by using clamping method rats were then randomly divided into four groups. Different doses of GLEVC were administered in HIRI rat model. The level of ALT, AST, SOD and MDA content in serum were detected in HIRI groups. Moreover, the activity of SOD, content of MDA, and GSH in hepatic tissue were also examined. Bcl-2 and Bax protein expression were detected by immunohistochemical staining method. Compared with sham group, GLEVC has the protective effect on the HIRI-induced model. Level of ALT, AST, and MDA in blood were significantly lower in GLEVC group compared with HIRI-induced group. Moreover, SOD activity and GSH were increased in GLEVC group whereas MDA content was reduced by GLEVC treatment. Furthermore, HIRI-induced Bax protein was reduced upon GLEVC treatment, whereas Bcl-2 protein expression was enhanced. These results demonstrate that GLEVC treatment may provide potential ameliorative therapy by reducing damaged signaling mechanism in hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury model.

The image-to-image translation is one of the deep learning applications using image data. In this paper, we aim at improving the performance of object transfiguration which transforms a specific object in an image into another specific object. For object transfiguration, it is required to transform only the target object and maintain background images. In the existing results, however, it is observed that other parts in the image are also transformed. In this paper, we have focused on the structure of artificial neural networks that are frequently used in the existing methods and have improved the performance by adding constraints to the exiting structure. We also propose the advanced structure that combines the existing structures to maintain their advantages and complement their drawbacks. The effectiveness of the proposed methods are shown in experimental results.

Hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (HIRI) is linked with high mortality rate. Several agents have been developed so far to reduce the risk of HIRI. In this study, we investigated the effects of Acanthopanax senticosus extract (AS) on hepatic ischemia-reperfusion. To explore the protective effects of A. senticosus extract injection (ASI) on hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury rats animal model were used. After the development of HIRI by using clamping method rats were then randomly divided into five groups. Different doses of AS were administered in HIRI rat model. The level of ALT, AST, and MDA content in serum were detected in sham and HIRI groups. The activity of SOD, MPO and Ca2+-ATPase, content of MDA, and cAMP in hepatic tissue were also measured. Expression of Bcl-2 and Bax protein were detected by immunohistochemical staining method. Compared with sham group, ASI has the protective effect on the HIRI model in rats. Blood levels of ALT, AST, SOD, MPO, and MDA were significantly lower in ASI group compared with HIRI. Indeed SOD and Ca2+-ATPase activities, MDA content, and cAMP level were improved in ASI group. Furthermore, Bcl-2 and Bax protein were improved in ASI group compared with only HIRI group. These results suggest that AS may provide potential ameliorative therapy by inhibiting the damage signaling mechanism in hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury model.

In this paper, we first point out the limitation of the existing methods in usability evaluation, and propose a new method to find tasks and users that can cause problems in the use of software applications. To deal with object-based applications, we define unit actions and divide a given task into the sequence of unit actions. Then, we propose a new measure to calculate the degree of lostness for the unit actions. In several experiments, we show the proposed method can represent the usability well while the previous method has a problem in object-based applications. We also find that the user’s evaluation is more related to the proposed method than the previous method based on execution time through correlation analysis.

Eleutherococcus senticosus Maxim. has been successfully used as an oriental medicine for various diseases including allergic disorders. Histamine is a major factor on various allergic responses and it is reported that histamine was released from mast cells by sensitization of allergens. In this study, ethanol extracts from E. senticosus Maxim. were prepared and the composition was analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography. The eleutheroside B as a primary effective component of E. senticosus was contained approximately 225 mg/kg in root bark extracts. The extracts were found to significantly inhibit compound 48/80-induced histamine release form mast cells in dose dependent manner. However the extracts had low cytotoxicity on the mast cells with MTT assay. These results showed that E. senticosus Maxim. extracts may be the effective materials on inflammatory disorders.

In this paper, we deal with the performance evaluation method of user identification and user tracking for intelligent robots using face images. This paper shows general approaches for standard evaluation methods to improve intelligent robot systems as well as their algorithms. The evaluation methods proposed in this paper can be combined with the evaluation methods for detection algorithms of face region and facial components to measure the overall performance of face recognition in intelligent robots.

In this paper, we report the progress in the development of performance evaluation method for detection algorithms of face region and facial components. This paper aims to provide a standardized evaluation method for general approach in face recognition application as a potential component in futuristic intelligent robot systems. From an image capture process to the retrieval of face-related information, all the necessary steps are shown with examples.

While increasing demand of the service for the disabled and the elderly people, assistive technologies have been developed rapidly. The natural signal of human such as voice or gesture has been applied to the system for assisting the disabled and the elderly people. As an example of such kind of human robot interface, the Soft Remote Control System has been developed by HWRS-ERC in KAIST[1]. This system is a vision-based hand gesture recognition system for controlling home appliances such as television, lamp and curtain. One of the most important technologies of the system is the hand gesture recognition algorithm. The frequently occurred problems which lower the recognition rate of hand gesture are inter-person variation and intra-person variation. Intra-person variation can be handled by inducing fuzzy concept. In this paper, we propose multivariate fuzzy decision tree(MFDT) learning and classification algorithm for hand motion recognition. To recognize hand gesture of a new user, the most proper recognition model among several well trained models is selected using model selection algorithm and incrementally adapted to the user’s hand gesture. For the general performance of MFDT as a classifier, we show classification rate using the benchmark data of the UCI repository. For the performance of hand gesture recognition, we tested using hand gesture data which is collected from 10 people for 15 days. The experimental results show that the classification and user adaptation performance of proposed algorithm is better than general fuzzy decision tree.

This paper presents a task planning system for a steward robot, which has been developed as an interactive intermediate agent between an end-user and a complex smart home environment called the ISH(Intelligent Sweet Home) at KAIST(Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). The ISH is a large-scale robotic environment with various assistive robots and home appliances for independent living of the elderly and the people with disabilities. In particular, as an approach for achieving human-friendly human-robot interaction, we aim at 'simplification of task commands' by the user. In this sense, a task planning system has been proposed to generate a sequence of actions effectively for coordinating subtasks of the target subsystems from the given high-level task command. Basically, the task planning i s performed under the framework of STRIPS(Standard Research Institute Problem Solver) representation and the split planning method. In addition, we applied a state-partitioning technique to the backward split planning method to reduce computational time. By analyzing the obtained graph, the planning system decomposes an original planning problem into several independent sub-problems, and then, the planning system generates a proper sequence of actions. To show the effectiveness of the proposed system, we deal with a scenario of a planning problem in the ISH.