This research analyzed the impact of quality of service as perceived by Hapkido students on their exercise continuation and recommendation intentions. It also identified the measures to reduce the rate of student dropout, strengthen competitiveness, and create more efficient marketing strategies for consumer patterns that are rapidly diversifying Hapkido. A questionnaire survey method was conducted with 300 middle and high school students aged 14–19 years having Hapkido training of three months to two years in Incheon and Bucheon during March–April 2019. Frequency, factor, reliability, correlation, and standard multiple regression analyses were conducted on the surveyed data. The conclusions are as follows. First, considering the impact of service quality on exercise continuation intention, service quality positively affects reliability, personification, and perceptual openness; in terms of possibility, it positively affects typicality, personification, and perceptual openness; and in terms of reinforcement, it positively affects reliability and perceptual openness. Second, examining the impact of service quality on recommendation intention positively affects reliability, personification, and perceptual openness. Third, exercise continuation intention positively affects recommendation intention.

: The purpose of this research was to verify the importance and performance of crisis management in Korean fitness center using Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA). For this study, 304 fitness center executives and managers in Seoul and Gyeonggi region were selected as from March 21 to May 17, 2020. Frequency analysis was performed using SPSS 24.0 and exploratory factor analysis was conducted to verify the validity and reliability. Priority analysis and IPA analysis were performed to compare the mean values, and the following results were obtained. First, in the first quadrant, there were 6 attributes besides keep social distancing between employees and customers. Second, in the second quadrant, there were four attributes in addition to regular disinfection of the gymnasium. Third, in the third quadrant, there were 6 attributes besides maintain furniture clean. Third, there were 6 attributes other than maintaining furniture clean in the third quadrant. Fourth, in the fourth quadrant, there are three attributes in addition to the restriction of face-to-face meetings. The conclusion is as follows. First, equip supplies for prevention of covid19, keep social distance, and check government support policies. Second, analyze of economic support policies, and research on their application methods. Third, Prepare various non-face-to-face communication methods and Untact(non-contact) marketing strategies. Fourth, make a checklist for factors with relatively little importance.

Upcycling recycled carbon fibers recovered from waste carbon composites can reduce the price of carbon fibers while improving disposal-related environmental problems. This study assessed and characterized recycled carbon fibers subjected to sizing treatment using N-(2-aminoethyl)-3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APS) chemically coordinated with polyamide 6 (PA6) and polypropylene (PP) resins. Sizing treatment with 1 wt.% APS for 10 s yielded O=C-O on the surface of the carbon fiber, and the -SiOH in the APS underwent a dehydration-condensation reaction that converted O=C-O (lactone groups) into bonds of C-O (hydroxyl groups) and C=O (carbonyl groups). The effects of C-O and C=O on the interfacial bonding force increased to a maximum, resulting in an oxygen-to-carbon ratio (O/C) of 0.26. The polar/surface energy ratio showed the highest value of 32.29% at 10 s, and the interfacial bonding force showed the maximum value of 32 MPa at 10 s, which is about 15% better than that of commercial carbon fiber (PA6-based condition). In 10-s resizing treatments with 0.5 wt.% 3-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS), C-O, C=O, and O=C-O underwent a dehydration-condensation reaction with -SiOH, which broke the bonds between carbon and oxygen and introduced a methacrylate group (H2C=C(CH3)CO2H), resulting in a significant increase in C-O and C=O, with an O/C of 0.51. The polar/surface free energy ratio was about 38% at 10 s, with the interfacial bonding force increasing to 27% compared to commercial carbon fiber (PP-based conditions). The MPS exhibited a superior interfacial shear strength improvement, two times higher than that of APS, with excellent coordination with PP resin and commercial carbon fiber, although the interfacial bonding strength of the PP resin was significantly lower.

The Advanced Meteorological Image (AMI) onboard GEOKOMPSAT 2A (GK-2A) enables the retrieval of dust aerosol optical depth (DAOD) from geostationary satellites using infrared (IR) channels. IR observations allow the retrieval of DAOD and the dust layer altitude (24 hour) over surface properties, particularly over deserts. In this study, dust events in northeast Asia from 2020 to 2021 were investigated using five GK-2A thermal IR bands (8.7, 10.5, 11.4, 12.3, and 13.3 μm). For the dust cloud, the observed brightness temperature differences (BTDs) of 10.5 and 12.3 μm were found to be always negative, while the BTD of 8.7 and 10.5 μm varies relying on the dust intensity. Making the best use of optical properties, a physical approach for DAOD lookup tables (LUTs) was developed using IR channels to retrieve the DAOD. This study simulated the characteristics of thermal radiation transfer using the forward model and dust aerosols can explain by BTD (10.5, 12.3 μm), which is an intrinsic characteristic of dust aerosol. The DAOD and property of dust can be gained from the brightness temperature (BT) of 10.5 μm and the BTD of 10.5, 12.3 μm. Additionally, the cumulative distribution function (CDF) was employed to strengthen the continuity of 24-hour DAOD, which was applied to the algorithm by calculating the conversion value coefficient for the DAOD error correction of the IR with daytime visible aerosol optical depth (VAOD) as the true value. The results show that DAOD product can be successfully used during both daytime and nighttime to continuously monitor the flow of yellow dust from the GK-2A satellite in northeast Asia. In particular, the validation result of IR DAOD was similar to that of the active satellite product (CALIPSO/CALIOP), which showed a tendency similar to that for IR DAOD at night.

In South Korea, landslides are caused by localized heavy rainfall and typhoons, which often occur in the summer season at natural slopes in mountainous areas and artificial slopes in urban surroundings. Flow-type landslides frequently occur in mountainous areas. To evaluate flow-type landslides, it is essential to identify the physical characteristics of soil, giving focus to the soil on the top layers of various types of slope. This study conducts a survey and an analysis of the characteristics of landslides that occurred in the study area with different geological conditions of granite and gneiss. The characteristics of soil in the area and its surroundings that have or have not undergone landslides for every geological condition is also evaluated. Based on these characteristics and a statistics method, it extracts the triggering factors, permeability coefficients (k), and shearing strength with cohesion (c) and internal friction angel (φ) of soils that are highly related to landslides around weathered soil layers. As a result, the permeability coefficients show significant relevance with void ratio (e), the effective size of grains (D10), and uniformity coefficient (cu), while the shearing strength with the proportion of fine-grained soil (Fines), uniformity coefficient (cu), degree of saturation (S), dry weight density (rd), and void ratio (e). By obtaining this result, the study uses the regression analysis to suggest models to estimate the permeability coefficients and shearing strength. For the gneiss area, the statistics-based estimation model (SEM) is proposed as k_gn = (1.488 × 10^-02 × e) + (1.076 × D₁₀) + (-1.629 × 10^-04 × c_u) - (1.893 × 10^-02) for permeability coefficients; cgn = (-0.712 × Fines) + (-0.131 × c_u) + 15.335 for cohesion; and φgn = (27.01 × r_d) + (-12.594 × e) + 6.018 for internal frictional angle of soils. For the granite area, the statistics-based estimation model (SEM) is proposed as kgr = (8.281 × 10^-03 × e) + (0.639 × D₁₀) + (-2.766 × 10^-05 × c_u) - (9.907 × 10^-03) for permeability coefficients; c_gr = (-0.689 × Fines) + (-0.0744 × S) + 18.59 for cohesion; and φ_gr = (33.640 × r_d) + (-0.875 × e) - 9.685 for internal frictional angle of soils. The use of statistics-based estimation models (SEMs) for landslide-triggering factors that trigger landslides will support the simple calculation of permeability coefficient and shearing strength (cohesion and internal frictional angle), only requiring information about the physical properties of soil at the natural slopes that have different geological features such as gneiss and granite areas.

We performed Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) to suggest frontline treatments for patients with high PD-L1 expression (at least 50%). A total of 5,237 patients from 22 studies were included in this NMA. In terms of progression-free survival, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) plus bevacizumab plus chemotherapy had the highest surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA) value (98.1%), followed by ICI plus chemotherapy (82.9%). In terms of overall survival (OS), dual immunotherapy plus chemotherapy had the highest SUCRA value (79.1%), followed by ICI plus bevacizumab plus chemotherapy (73.4%). However, there was no significant difference of survival outcomes among treatment regimens combined with immunotherapy. Moreover, ICI plus chemotherapy failed to reveal a significant OS superiority to ICI monotherapy (hazard ratio = 0.978, 95% credible internal: 0.771-1.259). In conclusion, this NMA indicates that ICI plus chemotherapy with/without bevacizumab might to be the best options in terms of OS for NSCLC with high PD-L1 expression. Considering there was no significant difference of survival outcomes among treatment regimens incorporating immunotherapy and ICI plus chemotherapy failed to show significant survival benefits over ICI monotherapy, however, ICI monotherapy may be reasonable as first-line treatment for advanced NSCLC with high PD-L1 expression and no targetable aberrations.

Autophagy is a cellular homeostatic process by which cells degrade and recycle their malfunctioned contents, and impairment in this process leads to Parkinson's disease (PD) pathogenesis. Dioscin, a steroidal saponin, has induced autophagy in several cell lines and animal models. The role of dioscin-mediated autophagy in PD remains to be investigated. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the hypothesis that dioscin-regulated autophagy and autophagy-related genes (ATG) could protect neuronal cells in PD via reducing apoptosis and enhancing neurogenesis. In this study, the 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium ion (MPP+) were used to induce neurotoxicity and impair autophagic flux in a human neuroblastoma cell line (SH-SY5Y). The result showed that dioscin pre-treatment counters MPP+-mediated autophagic flux impairment and alleviates MPP+-induced apoptosis by downregulating activated caspase-3 and Bax expression while increasing Bcl-2 expression. In addition, dioscin pre-treatment was found to increase neurotrophic factors and tyrosine hydroxylase expression, suggesting that dioscin could ameliorate MPP+-induced degeneration in dopaminergic neurons and benefit the PD model. Interestingly, the neuroprotective activities of dioscin were suppressed when co-treated with chloroquine (CQ), an autophagosome-lysosome inhibitor. In summary, we showed dioscin’s neuroprotective activity in neuronal SH-SY5Y cells might be partly related to its autophagy induction and suppression of the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway.

The tumor microenvironment of colorectal cancer (CRC) is heterogenous; thus, it is likely that multiple immune-related and inflammatory markers are simultaneously expressed in the tumor. The aim of this study was to identify immune-related and inflammatory markers expressed in freshly frozen CRC tissues and to investigate whether they are related to the clinicopathological features and prognosis of CRC. Seventy patients with CRC who underwent curative surgical resection between December 2014 and January 2017 were included in this study. Tissue samples were obtained from tumor and non-tumor areas in the patients’ colons. The concentrations of immune-related markers (APRIL/TNFSF13, BAFF, LAG-3, PD-1, PD-L1, and CTLA-4) and inflammatory markers (CHIT, MMP-3, osteocalcin, pentraxin-3, sTNF-R1, and sTNF-R2) in the samples were measured using the Bio-plex Multiplex Immunoassay system. The concentrations of APRIL/TNFSF13, BAFF, and MMP-3 in the samples were significantly high; thus, we conducted analyses based on the cutoff values for these three markers. The high APRIL/TNFSH13 expression group showed a significantly higher rate of metastatic lesions than the low expression group, whereas the high MMP-3 expression group had higher CEA levels, more lymph node metastases, and more advanced disease stages than the low expression group. The five-year disease-free survival of the high MMP-3 expression group was significantly shorter than that of the low expression group (65.1% vs. 90.2%, p=0.033). This study provides evidence that the APRIL/TNFSF13, BAFF, and MMP-3 pathway is overexpressed CRC tissues and is associated with unfavorable clinicopathological features and poor prognosis in CRC patients. These markers could serve as diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers for CRC.

Keywords: Cell-free DNA, sepsis, oxidative stress, immunoredox modulation, cecal ligation and puncture, toll-like receptor

We previously found a novel a new sirtuin (SIRT) inhibitor MHY2256 that exerts anticancer activity through p53 acetylation in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. Here, we investigated the anticancer activity of MHY2256 against hormone-related cancer, which is an endometrial cancer with poor prognosis. We found that MHY2256 markedly reduced cellular proliferation at low concentrations against Ishikawa endometrial cancer cells. The IC50 values of MHY2256 were much lower than that of salermide. Furthermore, MHY2256 significantly reduced the protein expression and activities of SIRT1, 2, and 3 with similar effects as salermide, a well-known SIRT inhibitor. Particularly, MHY2256 markedly inhibited tumor growth in a tumor xenograft mouse model of Ishikawa cancer cells. During the experimental period, there was no significant change in the body weight of mice treated with MHY2256. Detailed analysis of the sensitization mechanisms of Ishikawa cells revealed that late apoptosis was largely increased by MHY2256. Additionally, MHY2256 increased G1 arrest and reduced cell cyclic-related proteins, suggesting that apoptosis by MHY2256 was achieved by cellular arrest. Particularly, p21 was greatly increased by MHY225656, suggesting that cell cycle arrest by p21 is a major factor in MHY2256 sensitization in Ishikawa cells. We also detected a significant increase in acetylated p53, a target protein of SIRT1, in Ishikawa cells after MHY2256 treatment. In a mouse xenograft model, MHY2256 significantly reduced tumor growth and weight without apparent side effects. These results suggest that MHY2256 exerts its anticancer activity through p53 acetylation in endometrial cancer and can be used for targeting hormone-related cancers.

Pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) is essential for aerobic glycolysis and is highly expressed in various cancer tissues. Although high PKM2 expression is observed in prostate cancer tissues, its functional role in cancer metabolism is unclear. Here, we investigated the role of PKM2 in regulating autophagy and its associated pathways in prostate cancer cells. PKM2 expression was silenced using various PKM2 small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and then we measured PKM2-related cellular pathways associated with autophagy. PKM2 siRNA-transfected prostate cancer cells showed significantly reduced viability. Acridine orange staining and immunoblotting analysis showed that PKM2 downregulation markedly increased autophagic cell death. Results of western blotting analysis showed that PKM2 knockdown affected protein kinase B/mechanistic target of rapamycin 1 pathway, which consequently downregulated the expression of glycolytic enzymes lactate dehydrogenase A and glucose transporter 1. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show that PKM2 inhibition alters cancer cell metabolism and induces autophagy. Thus, the present study provides a strategy for the development of PKM2-targeted novel anticancer drugs for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Background: Autonomic neuropathy commonly arises as a long-term complication in end stage kidney disease (ESKD) and can be diagnosed from heart rate variability (HRV), calculated from electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings. There is limited data about HRV using real-time ECG to predict HD efficiency in patients with ESKD who are routinely doing HD in real-world practice. Methods: Total of 50 patients (62.1 ± 10.7 years) with ESKD underwent continuous real-time ECG monitor (237.4 ± 15.3 min) during HD for HRV using remote monitoring system and checked electrolyte levels before/after HD. And we compared HRV according to electrolyte levels. Results: During the monitor, we checked total 2374 times of ECG and electrolyte level simultaneously of all patients. Both time and frequency domain HRV were higher when the patients had lower K+ level (<0.5 mEq/L) and P+ level change (<2 mEq/L) before/after HD as compared with those with higher K+ level (≥0.5 mEq/L) and P+ level (≥2 mEq/L) change respectively. In addition, there were higher incidence of arrhythmic events including atrial/ventricular premature complexes, even though no difference of mean heart rate in patients with lower K+ and P+ level change group (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Higher HRV was independently associated with poor controlled K+ and P+ level during hemodialysis in patients with ESKD. This is further substantiated by independent continuous associations between real-time measures of higher HRV and K+ and P+ level. These data strongly suggest that cardiac autonomic dysfunction can be caused by lower change of electrolytes before/after hemodialysis alone.

There is evidence that behavioral risk factors such as western type diet, and life style can predispose to oxidative stress, deficiency in antioxidant status, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia and increase in inflammation in tissues of various organs: beta cells of the pancreas, LDL receptors in the hepatocytes, endothelium, neurons, osteocytes and gut. Further studies indicate that diets rich in antioxidant flavonoids, omega-3 fatty acids and fiber in foods were inversely associated whereas western-type foods were positively associated with risk of mortality due to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). One important cause for beneficial effects of diet may be certain foods and nutrients such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains that are rich in fiber and flavonoids, known to produce liters og molecular hydrogen in the gut. It seems that, high-fiber diets, prebiotic and probiotics can produce greater hydrogen, which acts as an antioxidant and may inhibit free radical generation. Recent studies indicate that molecular hydrogen can inhibit hydroxyl and nitrosyl radicals and can directly act as antioxidant in the cells and tissues, which can cause marked decline in oxidative stress and inflammation leading to significant decline in CVDs and metabolic diseases. Clinical and experimental studies indicate that hydrogen therapy such as hydrogen rich water can provide benefits in the management of CVDs and metabolic diseases. Larger studies are necessary to verify the role of hydrogen administration in CVDs.

The causal effects of chondroitin, glucosamine, and vitamin/mineral supplement intake on kidney function remain unknown, despite being commonly used. We conducted a two-sample summary-level Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to test for causal associations between regular dietary supplement intake and kidney function. Genetic instruments for chondroitin, glucosamine, and vitamin/mineral supplement intake were obtained from genome-wide association study of European ancestry. Summary statistics for the log-transformed estimated glomerular filtration rate (log-eGFR) were provided by the CKDGen consortium. The multiplicative random-effects inverse variance-weighted method showed that genetically predicted chondroitin and glucosamine intake was causally associated with a lower eGFR (chondroitin, eGFR change beta = -0.113 %, standard error (SE) = 0.03 %, P-value = 2E-04; glucosamine, eGFR change beta = -0.240 %, SE = 0.035 %, P-value = 6E-12). However, a genetically predicted vitamin/mineral supplement intake was associated with a higher eGFR (eGFR change beta = 1.426 %, SE = 0.136 %, P-value = 1E-25). Validation analyses and pleiotropy-robust MR results for chondroitin and vitamin/mineral supplement intake supported the main results. Our MR study suggests a potential causal effect of chondroitin and glucosamine intake on kidney function. Therefore, clinicians should carefully monitor their long-term effects.

Mutations in the SACS gene are associated with autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay disease (ARSACS) or complex clinical phenotypes of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). This study aimed to identify SACS mutations in a Korean CMT cohort with cerebellar ataxia and spasticity. As a result, eight pathogenic SACS mutations in four families were identified as the underlying causes of these complex phenotypes. The prevalence of CMT families with SACS mutations was determined to be 0.3%. All the patients showed sensory, motor, and gait disturbances with increased deep tendon reflexes. Lower limb magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was done in four patients, and all had fatty replacements. Of note, they all had similar fatty infiltrations between the proximal and distal lower limb muscles, different from the neuromuscular imaging feature in most CMT patients without SACS mutations who had distal dominant fatty involvement. Therefore, these findings were considered a characteristic feature in CMT patients with SACS mutations. Although further studies with more cases are needed, our results highlight lower extremity MRI findings in CMT patients with SACS mutations and broaden the clinical spectrum. We suggest screening for SACS in recessive CMT patients with complex phenotypes of ataxia and spasticity.