This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of insulin and epidermal growth factor (EGF) in a in vitro growth (IVG) medium on oocyte growth, in vitro maturation (IVM) and embryonic development of pig oocytes derived from small antral follicles (SAF) less than 3 mm in diameter. SAF oocytes were cultured for 2 days to induce IVG in alpha-minimal essential medium supplemented with 1 mM dbcAMP and 15% (v/v) fetal bovine serum. After IVG culture, oocyte maturation was induced by culturing IVG oocytes in IVM medium for 44 h. IVM oocytes that extruded the first polar body were selected and induced for parthenogenesis (PA) by applying electric stimulus. SAF oocytes cultured under the insulin treatment showed a significantly increased (P < 0.05) nuclear maturation (73.8%) compared to those cultured with insulin and EGF (59.8%). After PA, the proportions of blastocysts based on the number of metaphase II oocytes were significantly higher (P < 0.05) in oocytes that were cultured for IVG with insulin, EGF, and insulin + EGF (32.4%, 35.2%, and 34.8%, respectively) than in control (22.9%). IVG oocytes treated with insulin showed an increased oocyte diameter (116.3 μm) compared to those treated with insulin and EGF (114.0 μm) (P < 0.05). Intra-oocyte GSH content significantly increased (1.07 pixels/oocyte) by insulin treatment during IVG compared to that of oocytes treated with insulin + EGF (0.78 pixels/oocyte). These results demonstrate that IVG culture of SAF oocytes under insulin or/and EGF treatment supports oocyte maturation and improves embryonic development to the blastocyst stage after PA in pigs.

Host defense against pathogen invasion highly relies on immune defense machinery that is controlled by the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) of transcription factors. The Toll pathway are well known as an insect innate immune mechanism to protect host itself from invaded pathogens. Basically, in the edible insect, Tenebrio molitor, the Toll pathway is primarily activated by polymeric Lys-type peptidoglycans (PGNs), and components of fungal cell walls, β-1,3-glucan. Based on the current studies, the tremendous study has been focused on recognition and subsequent activation of spätzle in haemolymph, hence, there is a grave gap for intracellular event. Herein, in order to understand intracellular event of Toll signaling pathway, the Dorsal gene were identified. Moreover, domain analyses of TmDorsal2 gene indicate that there are two major domains such as Rel homology domain (RHD), ig-like, plexins, and transcription factors (IPT) domains. Based on the achieved results, TmDorsal2 mRNA was highly expressed in 1-day old pupa. Furthermore, TmDorsal2 was highly expressed in Malpighian tubules and fat body in last instar larvae (LL), and likewise mainly expressed in Malpighian tubules during adult 5-day old period, also the lowest expression of TmDorsal2 was observed in gonads. Moreover, TmDorsal2 mRNA levels after infection with E. coli appreciably went up at 6 and 9h time points. To investigate the effects of TmDorsal2 RNAi on larval susceptibility against various pathogens namely E. coli, S. aureus or C.albicans, dsRNA of TmDorsal2 has been synthesized the larvae dissected after 24h. As a result, TmAttacin1a, 1b and 2, TmDefencine1 and 2, TmTenecin1, 2, 3 and 4, TmCecropin2, TmColeoptericin1 and 2, Thaumatin-like protein 1 and 2 markedly reduced in the gut after injecting all mentioned microbes. In contrast, TmTenecin 2, Thaumatin-like protein 1 and 2 strikingly increased after microbe injection in the fat body. Interestingly, the most AMPs gene expression in whole body experimental case were upregulated. On the horizon, we will investigate effects of TmDorsal1 RNAi on larval susceptibility against various pathogens. Taken together, our studies may aid to understand insect innate immunity.

We previously demonstrated that epidermal growth factor (EGF) enhances cell migration and invasion of breast cancer cells in a SMAD ubiquitination regulatory factor 1 (SMURF1)-dependent manner and that SMURF1 induces degradation of β-catenin in C2C12 cells. However, the relationship between EGF-induced SMURF1 and β-catenin expression in breast cancer cells remains unclear. So, we investigated if EGF and SMURF1 regulate β-catenin expression in MDAMB231 human breast cancer cells. When MDAMB231 cells were incubated with EGF for 24, 48, and 72 hours, EGF significantly increased expression levels of SMURF1 mRNA and protein while suppressing expression levels of β-catenin mRNA and protein. Overexpression of SMURF1 downregulated β-catenin mRNA and protein, whereas knockdown of SMURF1 increased β-catenin expression and blocked EGF-induced β-catenin downregulation. Knockdown of β-catenin enhanced cell migration and invasion of MDAMB231 cells, while β-catenin overexpression suppressed EGF-induced cell migration and invasion. Furthermore, knockdown of β-catenin enhanced vimentin expression and decreased cytokeratin expression, whereas β -catenin overexpression decreased vimentin expression and increased cytokeratin expression. These results suggest that EGF downregulates β-catenin in a SMURF1-dependent manner and that β-catenin downregulation contributes to EGF-induced cell migration and invasion in MDAMB breast cancer cells.

본 연구에서는 현행 악취공정시험방법에 나타나있는 공기희석 관능법을 사용하여 물질농도와 희석배수와의 관계를 살펴보기 위해 프로피온산, 뷰틸산, 발레르산, i-발레르산 및 i-뷰틸알코올에 대한 물질농도와 희석배수를 측정하였다. 또한 상관관계식을 이용하여 지정악취물질의 농도 규제치의 적정성을 검토하였다. 1. 판정인에 의해 측정된 대상물질의 물질농도와 희석배수의 상관관계는 식 Log C = Af·Log D + 0.5에 의해 적절하게 나타났으며, 총 22종의 지정 악취물질별 상관관계식의 기울기 값의 범위는 0.9023~1.2012으로 이소발레르알데하이드가 가장 작고, 뷰틸알데하이드가 가장 큰 것으로 나타났다. 2. 물질별 관계식으로부터 산출된 희석배수 15와 20에 해당되는 물질농도와 최소감지농도와의 비를 구한 결과, 각 물질의 농도비가 희석배수 15 및 20과 유사한 수치를 나타내 물질별 관계식이 의미가 있는 것으로 추정되었다. 3. 물질별 관계식으로부터 산출된 희석배수 15와 20에 해당되는 물질농도와 현행 물질농도 기준치와 의 비교를 통하여 기준치의 적정 수준 여부를 검토 해본 결과, 프로피온산과 뷰틸산의 경우는 기준치가 상대적으로 낮게 설정된 것으로 판단되며, 발레르산, 이소발레르산과 뷰틸알코올의 경우 물질농도 기준치가 적정 수준인 것으로 추정된다. 본 연구결과는 현행 악취방지법의 부지경계선에서 복합악취 농도 규제기준에 대한 개선방안 및 지정악취 물질들의 물질농도와 악취강도, 희석배수간의 상관관계 및 특성연구 등의 기반 자료로 사용될 수 있을 것이다.

SPANE(the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience) 척도는 기존 정서 측정도구의 한계를 보완하기 위해 Diener 등(2010)이 개발한 정서적 안녕감 척도이다. 이 척도는 긍정적 정서와 부정적 정서 경험을 측정하는 총 12문항으로 구성되어 있으며, 포괄적 정서(e.g. positive, negative)와 구체적 정서(e.g. joyful, sad) 문항이 포함되어 있다. 각성수준의 측면에서도 고(e.g. joy, angry), 중(e.g. happy, afraid), 저(e.g. contented, sad) 각성 정서들이 모두 반영되어 있다. 본 연구는 한국판 SPANE 척도의 요인구조 및 성별 측정 동일성을 검토하였다. 이를 위해서, 한국 대학생 총 551명(남자 276, 여자 275)의 자료를 분석했다. 그 결과, SPANE 척도는 양호한 수준의 신뢰도와 요인 타당도를 보였다. 또한 남녀 집단 간에 요인구조, 요인부하량, 절편이 동일한 것으로 나타나서, 성별 척도 동일성이 확인되었다. 이러한 결과는 SPANE 척도가 한국에서도 대학생들의 정서적 안녕감을 측정하기에 적합한 척도일 뿐 아니라 성별 차이를 비교하는 타당한 도구가 될 수 있음을 시사한다.

본 연구는 한방기공운동에 참여하는 여성노인들의 재미요인이 건강관련 삶의 질에 미치는 영향력을 검증하기 위하여 수행되었다. 구체적으로는 한방기공운동에 참여하는 여성노인들의 인구통계학적인 내용에 따라 연령, 학력, 운동경력에 따른 두 변인과의 영향력을 분석하였고, 준거변인인 건강관련 삶의 질과 예언변인인 재미요인에 관계는 어떠한 관계로 형성되어 있는가를 알아보았다. 분석 결과는 한방기공운동의 재미요인이 건강관련 삶의 질에 영향을 미치고 있다는 실질적인 효과를 규명하였으며, 한방기공운동이 여성노인운동의 긍정적인 프로그램으로 활용될 수 있다는 근거를 제공하였다.

Corporate reputation – the central antecedent of trust – bears the potential to create sustainable competitive advantage. However, far too many examples of companies’ socially irresponsible behavior over the past years led to a severe crisis of confidence. Disgraced companies suffer from the adverse effects of their misbehaviors at all levels. As a consequence, one of the top priorities for both practitioners and business scholars is the identification of opportunities to (re)build corporate reputation. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a key driver of reputation perceptions, is a very promising one. However, as CSR is a multidimensional construct that comprises a wide range of activities, the selection of the “right” ones deems a major challenge. Based on a literature review, we advocate that news media data should be utilized to analyze which CSR dimensions are particularly likely to affect reputation perceptions. As journalists rely on companies’ press releases as a starting point for their business articles, companies need to carefully evaluate which CSR dimensions they emphasize in their communication strategy. Based on superior measures of reputation and CSR, this study utilizes reputation and news media coverage data on companies listed in the German DAX30 between 2005 and 2011. The panel data regression encompasses the multidimensional concept of CSR, presenting a six-dimensional CSR construct including environment, employee relations, community, product issues, corporate culture and corporate governance. Relevant moderating variables, namely firm and stakeholder characteristics, are investigated. In this context, the results show that the relevance of each of those six distinct dimensions differs for the formation of reputation judgements and varies across investigated stakeholder and company types: across all model specifications, negative media coverage addressing employee relations and community affects reputation perceptions. The general public primarily perceives negative news coverage as relevant for their reputation judgements. Opinion leaders seem to be less dependent on the media to learn about CSR dimensions, as only four out of twelve independent variables exert a significant impact on their reputation judgments. News coverage about product issues only constitutes a key role in the formation of reputation judgements of firms that are predominantly known from direct experiences. A particularly large amount of variation can be explained for reputation ratings of these companies as well as for reputation perceptions of opinion leaders.

This study reviews the SERVQUAL model theoretically and statistically in relation to the nonlinearity of the perceived service quality. Perceived service quality measurement based on the SERVQUAL model assumes that consumers evaluate service quality by comparing their perceptions with their expectations. However, previous studies adopt linear factor analysis to discuss the SERVQUAL model. The present study assumes that consumers evaluate the service quality with a standard to admit the difference between their expectations and perceptions, and that their perceived service quality follows a nonlinear response. A nonlinear SERVQUAL model based on a nonlinear factor analysis model is proposed to understand the characteristics. The proposed model employs a threshold specification that represents the space in which consumers admit their discrepancy. The study extends a nonlinear factor analysis model to a nonparametric model in order to examine the functional aspects that from the perceived service quality. A nonparametric SERVQUAL model is adopted without any assumptions of the functional form. The empirical studies on the retail sector shows that the nonlinear model performs better than the linear model, and that the nonparametric model estimates the nonlinear function for perceived service quality. The results from the proposed model in our study provide insights in a consumer’s perceived service quality recognized as nonlinear and asymmetric. We conclude that the functional form for perceived service quality should be considered when specifying the measurement model for SERVQUAL. In addition, we discuss future work for a nonlinear measurement model and a nonparametric factor analysis.

We investigated the effects of two Brucella proteins expressed in a pMAL expression system, RocF and EF-Ts, as subunit vaccines on immune modulation and protective efficacy using a mouse model. Mice vaccinated with MBP-RocF and MBP-EF-Ts displayed increased production of TNF, IFN-, MCP-1, IL-10 and IL-6, and TNF and MCP-1, respectively. Furthermore, mice vaccinated with MBP-EF-Ts showed decreased induction of IFN- and Th2-related cytokines, IL-10 and IL-6. Higher proportions of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were observed in the blood of mice vaccinated with MBP-RocF than in the PBS-vaccinated group, although the increases were not significant. Furthermore, significantly reduced Brucella proliferation in the spleens of the MBP-RocF and MBP-EF-Ts groups were observed, but inflammation of these organs was not attenuated. Overall, these results indicate that RocF and EF-Ts could be potential subunit vaccine candidates against animal brucellosis.

Among the 8,700 in-service bridges in national highway, the steel bridges cover the 1600 sites and make up approximately the 20 percentage of the total amounts. Due to recent rapid increase both in traffic volume and in frequency of overloaded vehicles, the need for re-evaluating the fatigue life of the steel bridges is increasing. However, the existing fatigue life assessment method are too complicate and difficult to apply to field directly. To improve such deficiency of the existing fatigue life assessment procedures, this study reviews the fatigue life assessment methods in Eurocode and then proposes an easier and simpler fatigue life assessment procedure that could evaluate the remaining fatigue life of the steel bridges using traffic data collected from a high-speed weigh-in-motion system installed in the national highway network. The Proposed fatigue life evaluation method is as follows; 1. Calculation of fatigue resistance 𝛾𝑀f and fatigue strength Δ𝜎𝑐 used in design, 2. Calculation of partial safety factor 𝛾𝐹f for equivalent stress range, 3. Calculation of stress range Δ𝜎𝐸2 using influence line, 4. Calculation of damage equivalent factor λ, 5. Review of Fatigue state and evaluation of fatigue life. The Proposed method can omit the existing complicated and repetitive calculation. Therefore, proposed method can estimate the fatigue damage and the theoretical fatigue life simply by comparing with the existing method.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of converting the results obtained using different rutting performance tests. The correlation between the three simulation tests was analysed to determine the conversion coefficient factor. Two parameters (temperature and speed of simulation testing) were evaluated in this study. The results of this study have shown that the values obtained in the SALS test were lower than those obtained in the HWTT and UKWTT. The conversion of the SALS test results to the HWTT results yielded a good propensity value. The temperature is important parameter for determining the conversion coefficient factor.