Bone remodeling is a process controlled by the action of two major bone cells; the bone forming osteoblast and the bone resorbing osteoclast. In the process of osteoclastogenesis, stromal cells and osteoblast produce RANKL, OPG, and M-CSF, which in turn regulate the osteoclastogenesis. During the bone resorption by activated osteoclasts, extracellular Ca²+/PO₄²- concentration and degraded organic materials goes up, providing the hypertonic microenvironment. In this study, we tested the effects of hypertonicity due to the degraded organic materials on osteoclastogenesis in co-culture system. It was examined the cellular response of osteoblastic cell in terms of osteoclastogenesis by applying the sucrose, and mannitol, as a substitute of degraded organic materials to co-culture system. Apart from the sucrose, mannitol, and NaCl was tested to be compared to the effect of organic osmotic particles. The addition of sucrose and mannitol (25, 50, 100, 150, or 200 mM) to co-culture medium inhibited the number of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) positive multinucleated cells induced by 10 nM (). However, NaCl did exert harmful effect upon the cells in this co-culture system, which is attributed to DNA damage in high concentration of NaCl. To further investigate the mechanism by which hypertonicity inhibits -induced osteoclastogenesis, the mRNA expressions of receptor activator of nuclear factor (NF)-kB ligand (RANKL) and osteoprotegerin (OPG) were monitored by RT-PCR. In the presence of sucrose (50 mM), RANKL mRNA expression was decreased in a dose-dependent manner, while the change in OPG and M-CSF mRNA were not occurred in significantly. The RANKL mRNA expression was inhibited for 48 hours in the presence of sucrose (50 mM), but such a decrement recovered after 72 hours. However, there were no considerable changes in the expression of OPG and M-CSF mRNA. Conclusively, these findings strongly suggest that hypertonic stress down-regulates -induced osteoclastogenesis via RANKL signal pathway in osteoblastic cell, and may playa pivotal role as a regulator that modulates osteoclastogenesis.

The electrosorption of U(VI) from waste water was carried out by using an activated carbon fiber (ACF) felt electrode in a continuous electrosorption cell. In order to enhance the electrosorption capacity at a lower potential, the ACF was electrochemically modified in an acidic and a basic solution. Pore structure and functional groups of the electrochemically modified ACF were examined, and the effects of the modification conditions were studied for the adsorption of U(VI). Specific surface area of all the ACFs was decreased by this modification. The amount of the acidic functional groups decreased with a basic modification, while the amount increased a lot with an acidic modification. The electrosorption capacity of U(VI) decreased on the acid modified electrode due to the shielding effect of the acidic functional groups. The base modified electrode enhanced the capacity due to a reduction of the acidic functional groups. The electrosorption amount of U(VI) on the base modified electrode at .0.3 V corresponds to that of the as-received ACF electrode at .0.9 V. Such a good adsorption capacity was due to a reduction of the shielding effect and an increase of the hydroxyl ions in the electric double layer on the ACF surface by the application of negative potential.

Because hand-written characters, especially drawn by a brush can give readers various impressions, they are not only a communication method but also art works. Authors have already investigated the relationship between brush motion analytical results and sensory testing results obtained from Japanese hiragana and reported quantitative evaluation method for the beauty of hiragana, In this paper, sensory tests for South Koreans who cannot recognize the word are carried out, compared with sensory testing results of Japanese. The evaluation objects are 6 hiragana drawn by 4 beginners and 2 experts, Semantic Differential Method based on 30 paired evaluation words are used in the sensory tests. Therefore South Koreans also feel the beauty in hiragana drawn by experts, as compared with by beginners. On the other hand it was confirmed that South Koreans couldnt recognize the difference among beginners. Judging from the factor analysis results, both Japanese and South Koreans selected stability as the 1st factor, there is interesting difference in the following orders.

Isotropic pitch based carbon fibers were exposed to isothermal oxidation in carbon dioxide gas to study the activation kinetics under the temperature of 800~1100℃. The kinetic equation f=1--(-atb) was introduced and the constant b was obtained in the range of 0.92~1.25. It was shown that the activated carbon fiber shows the highly specific surface area (SSA) when the constant b comes close to 1. The activation kinetics were evaluated by the reaction-controlling regime (RCR) according to changes of the apparent activation energy with changes of the conversion. It was observed that the activation energies increase from 47.6 to 51.2 kcal/mole with the conversion increasing from 0.2 to 0.8. It was found that the pores of the activated carbon fiber under the chemical reaction were developed well through the fiber.