Obesity, a global health concern characterized by excessive fat accumulation, necessitates the discovery of anti-obesity compounds. Rottlerin, known for its anti-cancer effects as a mitochondrial uncoupler, has been a subject of interest. However, its impact on reducing intracellular lipid accumulation remains a gap in our understanding. This study aimed to fill this gap by dissecting the mechanism of rottlerin in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. We treated differentiated 3T3-L1 cells with 0-20 mM of rottlerin for 48 hours to assess its capability to induce lipid accumulation. Notably, we observed no cytotoxicity associated with the treatment of rottlerin up to 20 mM, indicating its safety at these concentrations. Lipid accumulation, measured by oil Red O, was downregulated dose-independently by rottlerin. We also found that key lipogenic enzymes, including SCD1 and DGAT1, were decreased. The transcription factor of lipogenic genes, SREBP1, was reduced by approximately 80% with rottlerin. LRP6, a crucial link between de novo lipogenesis mechanism reactions and Wnt signaling, was also degraded by around 70%. Interestingly, the downstream regulation of LRP6, b-catenin, and TCFL2 was diminished by rottlerin. Our data indicate that rottlerin alleviates adipocyte lipid accumulation by suppressing the LRP6/β-catenin/SREBP1c pathway. These findings underscore the potential of rottlerin as a safe nutraceutical for combating obesity.

The study aims to analyze the mixed characteristics of knit fashion design as demonstrated in Sacai's collection, which promotes hybrid and mesh-up fusion and proposes various knit design ideas. Standards for categorizing mixed phenomena of Sacai’s knit design were established through a review of literature and data analysis. The study’s data collection period was from 2012 to 2021, and a total of 174 items were analyzed. The following are the results. First is the fusion of traditional knit and contemporary styles expressed through de-constructive design; traditional knit styles are combined with contemporary styles through color, material, and knitting structure mixtures, such as mixing Northern European Aran, Fair Isle, Nordic, and Ropy knit. Second, the Sakai knit design combines male and female styles by mixing materials and details. A deconstructed knit cardigan was matched with androcentric pin-striped shirts worn over layered shirring skirts embellished with chiffon and lace. Third, everyday street fashion style is blended with a formal, elegant fashion style. For example, the front view has a typical everyday appearance, whereas the back view contains florid and decorated details. The style is expressed as a 360-degrees appellation, with one thing in the front and another in the back. Sacai’s distinctive expressional characteristics include a mixed and de-constructive style characterized by unexpected design.

Kim, Younhee. 2018. “Private Speech and Mutual Engagement in Preschoolers' Playtime Interaction: Talk and Embodiment”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(2), 119~165. Preschoolers' playtime interaction presents a unique context where private speech/self-talk and mutual conversation are co-present as well as within and out-of-(pretend play) frame talk. Preliminary observation of the data from the larger project revealed an overall pattern where the two children would play together and soon one child or both of them wander off to his/her own private speech/play mode, and then mutual engagement is achieved again. The current study examines this phenomenon from a conversation analytic perspective by showing what types of sequential resources are employed by the children to manage the transition. The resources include making an announcement, a noticing comment about the shared environment, repetition, code-switching, and embodied resources such as gaze, postural orientation, and spatial positioning in the play space (Kendon 1990). The transition from mutual conversation to private speech often accompanies transition from reality to pretend play talk, though not exclusively so. Making a meta-pretend play comment and making a reference to the theme of the joint play also served as an effective way to achieve re-engagement. Based on detailed interactional analysis, the study suggests that the playtime interaction of preschoolers affords more self-oriented speech (self-repair, private speech) and is characterized by rather loosened expectation for responsivity while “playing together” takes close orientation to the other child's behavior as they co-ordinate moments of mutual engagement and separate play throughout their co-presence.

The study examines interactional practices for initiating topic in naturally occurring conversation using Conversation Analysis (Button & Casey, 1984, 1985, 1988-1989 to name a few) as a methodological tool. The data of the current study is comprised of 14 hours of conversation-for-learning (Kasper & Kim, 2015) data between one American graduate student and two Korean adolescent ESL learners. It is longitudinal data where the participants have met every two weeks over the period of nine months. Between the two typical sequential environments where topic shift occurs, the current study focuses on boundaried topical movement as opposed to stepwise topical movement. The study first presents a range of practices used to initiate topic at topic-bounding sequential environments as reported in L1 English speaker conversation, including topic initial elicitors, itemized news inquiry and news announcement. Then, the study shows how participants’ relative knowledge and estimated right to the knowledge of the news/topic significantly figure in the design of topic initiation. Lastly, the study provides a developmental picture of the focal L2 learner’s topic initiating practice along the timeline and concludes with some pedagogical implications.