Adaptive and collaborative natural resource management has been proposed as a means to navigate the social-ecological system dynamics of resilient systems. However, our understanding of how diverse ...stakeholders and local actors contribute to collaborative management processes and outcomes is limited, especially with regard to small-scale resource management. This study investigates the role of local people in Korean village grove restoration projects, focusing on bridging linkages and bridging organizations. From a network perspective, we analyze data collected from key informant interviews, document reviews, and field visits to four village groves, to identify key actors and actor groups and to examine their relationships in each restoration project. Along with the relational patterns of local people, the multiple functions of bridging organizations, including accessing critical resources, resolving conflict, enhancing mutual trust, and building local capacity, vary between the four villages. The findings provide insights into the potential of local civil society, through the bridging roles of village-based citizen organizations, to contribute to the emergence of collaborative and adaptive management networks and improved management outcomes.
The incidence of achilles tendon rupture varies by gender, age, and seasonal variation. However, there has been no study as yet linking achilles tendon rupture to daily fluctuations in outdoor ...temperature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between outdoor temperature and achilles tendon rupture using a Korea Meteorological Administration database and a Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort database. Between 2002 and 2015, all instances of achilles tendon repair were retrieved from the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort database to examine sociodemographic factors, specifically sex, age, residential area, and income level. Minimum age requirement was 20 years. Outdoor temperatures recorded at 16 observation points in South Korea were also acquired from the Korea Meteorological Administration data center for analysis. Overall, 850 (0.119%) of 713,456 individuals in the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort database underwent achilles tendon repair between 2002 and 2015. Yearly procedural totals increased with advancing age, peaking at ages 30-39 years (14.6 per 100,000 persons) and declining thereafter. Minimum, median, and maximum outdoor temperatures were associated with achilles tendon repair (p<0.05), as did household income. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, outdoor temperatures, sex, age, and household income emerged as factors significantly associated with achilles tendon repair. Outcomes of this study confirm an association between incidence of achilles tendon repair and outdoor temperature, the latter denoting a novel index and likely surrogate measure of vigorous physical activity afforded by warmer weather.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Facial expression recognition (FER) has been extensively studied in various applications over the past few years. However, in real facial expression datasets, labels can become noisy due to the ...ambiguity of expressions, the similarity between classes, and the subjectivity of annotators. These noisy labels negatively affect FER and significantly reduce classification performance. In previous methods, overfitting can occur as the noise ratio increases. To solve this problem, we propose the split and merge consistency regularization (SMEC) method that is robust to noisy labels by examining various image regions rather than just one part of facial expression images without negatively affecting the meaning. We split facial expression images into two images and input them into the backbone network to extract class activation maps (CAMs). This approach merges two CAMs and improves robustness to noisy labels by normalizing the consistency between the CAM of the original image and the merged CAM. The proposed SMEC method aims to improve FER performance and robustness against highly noisy labels by preventing the model from focusing on only a single part without losing the semantics of the facial expression images. The SMEC method demonstrates robust performance over state-of-the-art noisy label FER models on an unbalanced facial expression dataset called the real-world affective faces database (RAF-DB) regarding class-wise accuracy for clean and noisy labels, even at severe noise rates of 40% to 60%.
In the myeloid compartment of the tumor microenvironment, CD244 signaling has been implicated in immunosuppressive phenotype of monocytes. However, the precise molecular mechanism and contribution of ...CD244 to tumor immunity in monocytes/macrophages remains elusive due to the co-existing lymphoid cells expressing CD244.
To directly assess the role of CD244 in tumor-associated macrophages, monocyte-lineage-specific CD244-deficient mice were generated using cre-lox recombination and challenged with B16F10 melanoma. The phenotype and function of tumor-infiltrating macrophages along with antigen-specific CD8 T cells were analyzed by flow cytometry and single cell RNA sequencing data analysis, and the molecular mechanism underlying anti-tumorigenic macrophage differentiation, antigen presentation, phagocytosis was investigated ex vivo. Finally, the clinical feasibility of CD244-negative monocytes as a therapeutic modality in melanoma was confirmed by adoptive transfer experiments.
CD244
LysM
mice demonstrated a significant reduction in tumor volume (61% relative to that of the CD244
control group) 14 days after tumor implantation. Within tumor mass, CD244
LysM
mice also showed higher percentages of Ly6C
macrophages, along with elevated gp100
IFN-γ
CD8 T cells. Flow cytometry and RNA sequencing data demonstrated that ER stress resulted in increased CD244 expression on monocytes. This, in turn, impeded the generation of anti-tumorigenic Ly6C
macrophages, phagocytosis and MHC-I antigen presentation by suppressing autophagy pathways. Combining anti-PD-L1 antibody with CD244
bone marrow-derived macrophages markedly improved tumor rejection compared to the anti-PD-L1 antibody alone or in combination with wild-type macrophages. Consistent with the murine data, transcriptome analysis of human melanoma tissue single-cell RNA-sequencing dataset revealed close association between CD244 and the inhibition of macrophage maturation and function. Furthermore, the presence of CD244-negative monocytes/macrophages significantly increased patient survival in primary and metastatic tumors.
Our study highlights the novel role of CD244 on monocytes/macrophages in restraining anti-tumorigenic macrophage generation and tumor antigen-specific T cell response in melanoma. Importantly, our findings suggest that CD244-deficient macrophages could potentially be used as a therapeutic agent in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Furthermore, CD244 expression in monocyte-lineage cells serve as a prognostic marker in cancer patients.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Although most Korean immigrant women experience stress during the acculturation process, few studies have explored how this population copes with stressful events when adjusting to a new society. ...This study aimed to identify the types of coping strategies these women use, as well as the predictive factors for the same. Data were collected from 136 Korean immigrant women residing in Texas, using a self-report questionnaire written in Korean. The results showed that the participants most frequently used task-oriented coping strategies, followed in order by emotion-oriented and avoidance-oriented strategies. There were no significant predictive factors for task-oriented or avoidance-oriented coping strategies. However, age, English proficiency, length of residence, immigration stress, alcohol consumption, and at-risk drinking by a male partner significantly predicted the use of emotion-oriented coping strategies among participants. To increase access to professional services for Korean immigrant women in the United States, culturally sensitive social services and bilingual providers would be beneficial. Because emotion-oriented coping methods were the most common in Korean immigrant women, Korean churches could form partnerships and cooperate with social service agencies. Drinking by a male partner is an important issue that significantly affects the coping methods of Korean immigrant communities. Finally, limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.
•Korean immigrant women use varied coping strategies.•This study explored the types of coping strategies used by women in a new society.•Significant predictive factors were identified for emotional-oriented coping.•Culturally sensitive services should be provided to help with acculturation.
The purpose of this study was to develop a virtual reality-based nursing education program aimed at improving nursing students' severity classification competency. Severity classification in the ...emergency room is key to improving the efficiency of emergency room services worldwide. Prioritizing treatment based on correctly identifying the severity of a disease or an injury also ensures patients' safety. The five actual clinical scenarios in the program helped to promptly classify patients into five clinical situations based on the 2021 Korean Emergency Patient Classification Tool. Seventeen nursing students were in an experimental group that had access to a virtual reality-based simulation combined with clinical practice. Seventeen nursing students were in a control group that only participated in routine clinical practice. The virtual reality-based nursing education program effectively improved students' severity classification competency, performance confidence, and clinical decision-making ability. Although the pandemic continues, the virtual reality-based nursing education program provides realistic indirect experiences to nursing students in situations where clinical nursing practice is not possible. In particular, it will serve as basic data for the expansion and utilization strategy of virtual reality-based nursing education programs to improve nursing capabilities.
Although integrated home internet of things (IoT) services can be beneficial, especially for vulnerable older adults, the hurdle of usability hinders implementation of the technology. This study ...aimed to evaluate the practical usability of home IoT services in older adults, by frailty status, and to determine the potential obstacles. From August 2019 to July 2020, we randomly selected 20 vulnerable older adults (prefrailty group n = 11, and frailty group n = 9) who had already been identified as needing home IoT services in a community-based prospective cohort study, the Aging Study of the Pyeongchang Rural Area. Integrated home IoT services were provided for 1 year, and a face-to-face survey evaluating usability and satisfaction of each service was conducted. The usability of the integrated home IoT services declined gradually throughout the study. However, prefrail participants showed higher usability than frail older adults (difference-in-difference = - 19.431, p = 0.012). According to the frailty status, the change in usability for each service type also showed a different pattern. During the 12-month study period, the service with the highest satisfaction converged from various service needs to light control by remote control (77.8%) in the prefrailty group and automatic gas circuit breaker (72.7%) in the frailty group. For wider implementation of home IoT services, organizing services expected to have high usability and satisfaction based on user's frailty status is crucial. Also, providing education before service implementation might help older adults coping with digital literacy.
The purpose of this study is to improve the prediction of container volumes in Busan ports by applying external variables and time-series data decomposition methods to deep learning prediction ...models. Previous studies on container volume forecasting were based on traditional statistical methodologies, such as ARIMA, SARIMA, and regression. However, these methods do not explain the complexity and variability of data caused by changes in the external environment, such as the global financial crisis and economic fluctuations. Deep learning can explore the inherent patterns of data and analyze the characteristics (time series, external environmental variables, and outliers); hence, the accuracy of deep learning-based volume prediction models is better than that of traditional models. However, this does not include the study of overall trends (upward, steady, or downward). In this study, a novel deep learning prediction model is proposed that combines prediction and trend identification of container volume. The proposed model explores external variables that are related to container volume, combining port volume time-series decomposition with external variables and deep learning-based multivariate long short-term memory (LSTM) prediction. The results indicate that the proposed model performs better than the traditional LSTM model and follows the trend simultaneously.
Coastal hazards, such as a tsunamis and storm surges, are a critical threat to coastal communities that lead to significant loss of lives and properties. To mitigate their impact, event-driven water ...level changes should be properly monitored. A tide gauge is one of the conventional water level measurement sensors. Still, alternative measurement systems can be needed to compensate for the role of tide gauge for contingency (e.g., broken and absence, etc.). Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is an emerging water level measurement sensor that processes multipath signals reflected by the water surface that is referred to as GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R). In this study, we adopted the GNSS-R technique to monitor tsunamis and storm surges by analyzing event-driven water level changes. To detect the extreme change of water level, enhanced GNSS-R data processing methods were applied which included the utilization of multi-band GNSS signals, determination of optimal processing window, and Kalman filtering for height rate determination. The impact of coastal hazards on water level retrievals was assessed by computing the confidence level of retrieval (CLR) that was computed based on probability of dominant peak representing the roughness of the water surface. The proposed approach was validated by two tsunami events, induced by 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake and 2015 Chile earthquake, and two storm surge events, induced by 2017 Hurricane Harvey and occurred in Alaska in 2019. The proposed method successfully retrieved the water levels during the storm surge in both cases with the high correlation coefficients with the nearby tide gauge, 0.944, 0.933, 0.987, and 0.957, respectively. In addition, CLRs of four events are distinctive to the type of coastal events. It is confirmed that the tsunami causes the CLR deduction, while for the storm surges, GNSS-R keep high CLR during the event. These results are possibly used as an indicator of each event in terms of storm surge level and tsunami arrival time. This study shows that the proposed approach of GNSS-R based water level retrieval is feasible to monitor coastal hazards that are tsunamis and storm surges, and it can be a promising tool for investigating the coastal hazards to mitigate their impact and for a better decision making.
In this letter, we investigate the performance of a coherent free-space optical (FSO) communications system considering geometric spread and pointing errors as well as atmospheric turbulence fading ...and path loss. In particular, we derive the outage probability and average error probability of the coherent FSO system, considering the combined effects of path loss, geometric spread and pointing errors, and amplitude fluctuations and phase aberrations in series representations forms. Numerical and Monte Carlo simulation results confirm the validity of the derived outage probability and average error probability expressions.
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