With the rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a particularly sharp increase in the number of confirmed cases in Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions at the end of February, Korea faced an ...unprecedented shortage of medical resources, including hospital beds. To cope with this shortage, the government introduced a severity scoring system for patients with COVID-19 and designed a new type of quarantine facility for treating and isolating patients with mild symptoms out of the hospital, namely, the Residential Treatment Center (RTC). A patient with mild symptoms was immediately isolated in the RTC and continuously monitored to detect changes in symptoms. If the symptoms aggravate, the patient was transferred to a hospital. RTCs were designed by creating a quarantine environment in existing lodging facilities capable of accommodating > 100 individuals. The facilities were entirely divided into a clean zone (working area) and contaminated zone (patient zone), separating the space, air, and movement routes, and the staff wore level D personal protective equipment (PPE) in the contaminated zone. The staffs consisted of medical personnel, police officers, soldiers, and operation personnel, and worked in two or three shifts per day.
Their duty was mainly to monitor the health conditions of quarantined patients, provide accommodations, and regularly collect specimens to determine if they can be released.
For the past two months, RTCs secured approximately 4,000 isolation rooms and treated approximately 3,000 patients with mild symptoms and operated stably without additional spread of the disease in and out of the centers. Based on these experience, we would like to suggest the utilization of RTCs as strategic quarantine facilities in pandemic situations. KCI Citation Count: 0
This study’s purpose is to suggest a pedagogical method based on using animated movie in liberal arts English classes and to examine the direction that using animated movie as learning material ...should take. To this end, in this study, the content understanding and expression concentration stages using animated movie are presented. After students learned in class through animated movie, two tests were conducted to investigate the change in learners’ acquisition of English expressions. As a result, subjects’ learning of English expressions showed a significant improvement over time. An open-ended questionnaire was also conducted to ascertain learners’ satisfaction level and their perceptions of classes using animated movie, with learners’ satisfaction found to be high overall (77.1%). Students identified the reasons for their high satisfaction rate as the following: “fun and a touching story”, “beneficial composition of textbooks”, “efficient teaching methods”, “sympathetic topics”, and “appropriate difficulty”. When using video media in class, instructors should maximize and leverage the advantages of video media, which are rich both in context and in their linguistic aspects. KCI Citation Count: 0
This study’s purpose is to examine the effects of mobile apps on learners’ vocabulary acquisition and to analyze students’ perceptions and opinions about the vocabulary app. To this end, this study ...set up a control group, which was given explicit instructions in the classroom by the instructor and an experimental group, which used a vocabulary app. The vocabulary acquisition test results suggested that the difference between the the two groups was insignificant. However, user satisfaction with regard to the mobile app was high, and the reasons given were the following: convenience , efficiency of memorizing, having fun while learning, and the app’s interface. Based on these results, this study suggests that teachers should use mobile apps much more actively in classroom instruction, and encourge students to let apps play a more active role in their language studies. KCI Citation Count: 0
This study aims to introduce the technical term ‘formulaic sequences’ (FSs) and suggest some explicit and implicit activities for learning these types of sequences. FSs consist of several words but ...are treated as a single meaningful word. They are recognized and remembered as whole chunks due to their strong word cohesion. For the process of efficient FSs acquisition, this study introduces six explicit and implicit learning activities using the animated movie Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale & Wise, 1991): (1) If you were…, (2) contradiction, (3) comparison, (4) charactonym, (5) using a song, and (6) drawing a diagram. The first three were used as explicit activities while the latter three as implicit activities. For research purposes, two tests and a questionnaire were conducted to investigate preferences related to a variety of explicit and implicit activities. The test results indicated that using explicit and implicit activities had a positive effect on FSs acquisition. Meanwhile, the questionnaire results showed that learners displayed preferences in the order of ‘comparison,’ ‘using a song,’ ‘contradiction,’ ‘charactonym,’ ‘If you were…,’ and ‘drawing a diagram.’ Moreover, the study found that learners prefer explicit rather than implicit ways of learning FSs when using a movie. KCI Citation Count: 1
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of real-time remote video instruction using zoom on learners’ English reading achievement. The study also sought to identify the efficiency of ...zoom video lectures and consider supplementing them by surveying learners’ opinions and satisfaction regarding zoom video lectures. To this end, control and experimental groups were set up, and two achievement tests and a questionnaire were conducted. The study’s results demonstrated that zoom video lectures have a positive effect on learners’ English reading achievement. The questionnaire found that learners are satisfied with zoom video lectures for the following reasons: ‘increased interest in and motivation towards learning’, ‘self-directed learning’, ‘active interaction’, ‘ease of access’, ‘ease of information retrieval’. At the same time, the questionnaire also found that some learners are dissatisfied with zoom video lectures due to ‘mechanical errors or defects’, ‘poor audio quality’, and ‘the need to add customized functions for efficient classes’. In practice, zoom video lectures must be supplemented with automatic attendance processing, convenient data upload and download, and more efficient video screen management. Given the recent increase in online classes, instructors must develop teaching activities and/or strategies for video lectures that can encourage active participation by learners. KCI Citation Count: 0
Adipose tissue secretes a variety of bioactive substances that are associated with chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus. While resistin was ...first known as an adipocyte-secreted hormone (adipokine) linked to obesity and insulin resistance in rodents, it is predominantly expressed and secreted by macrophages in humans. Epidemiological and genetic studies indicate that increased resistin levels are associated with the development of insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Resistin also appears to mediate the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis by promoting endothelial dysfunction, vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation, arterial inflammation, and the formation of foam cells. Thus, resistin is predictive of atherosclerosis and poor clinical outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease and heart failure. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that resistin is associated with atherogenic dyslipidemia and hypertension. The present review will focus on the role of human resistin in the pathogeneses of inflammation and obesity-related diseases.
Hepatic ischemia and reperfusion injury are characterized by impaired autophagy, mitochondrial dysfunction, and subsequent compromise of cellular homeostasis following hepatic surgery or ...transplantation. Nobiletin, a natural flavonoid, is a beneficial antioxidant that possesses anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities. We investigated the effect of nobiletin on hepatic IR injury and described the underlying mechanisms. C57BL/6 mice were subjected to 60 min of partial hepatic ischemia, treated with nobiletin (5 mg/kg) or vehicle at the start of reperfusion, and killed at 5 h of reperfusion. Hepatic ischemia and reperfusion increased hepatocellular oxidative damage, inflammation, and cell death, but these changes were alleviated upon nobiletin treatment. Nobiletin increased the expression of proteins that control autophagy, mitochondrial dynamics, and biogenesis. Specifically, the SIRT-1/FOXO3a and PGC-1α pathways were activated by nobiletin. IR-induced AKT activation was associated with FOXO3a phosphorylation, which resulted in a significant reduction in the nuclear FOXO3a levels and potentially attenuated autophagy-regulatory gene expression. Nobiletin increased FOXO3a expression and its nuclear translocation via the inhibition of AKT. Specific inhibition of SIRT-1 abolished the protective effect of nobiletin, causing decreased FOXO3a expression, followed by autophagy induction and decreased PGC-1α expression and mitochondrial dynamics. Taken together, our data indicate that SIRT-1 directly mediates the protective effect of nobiletin against hepatic ischemia and reperfusion injury. The activation of autophagy and mitochondrial function through the SIRT-1/FOXO3a and PGC-1α pathways indicate that nobiletin could have therapeutic potential for treating hepatic ischemia and reperfusion injury.
Based on density functional theory, we systematically study the mechanical and electronic properties of monolayer and bilayer SnS2 and SnSe2. The electronic properties of these layers can be ...significantly tuned by applying in-plane strains and electric fields perpendicular to the sheets. The band gaps of monolayer SnS2 and SnSe2 slightly increase with the in-plane tensile strains, and they start to decrease after critical strains (5% for monolayer SnS2 and 7% for monolayer SnSe2). The band gaps of bilayer SnS2 and SnSe2 have a similar tendency to the monolayers with smaller critical strains (1% for bilayer SnS2 and 2% for bilayer SnSe2), which enables a semiconductor-to-metal transition at 10% strain for bilayer SnSe2. We also find that an external electric field perpendicular to bilayer SnS2 and SnSe2 modulates their electronic band gaps. Semiconductor-to-metal transitions are achieved at the electric fields of 0.27 V/Å for bilayer SnS2 and 0.13 V/Å for bilayer SnSe2.
Purpose: To investigate caregivers’ preference regarding fever management in the emergency department.
Methods: Between July 2011 and June 2014, we surveyed the preference in fever management by ...caregivers of febrile children aged 7 years or younger who visited the emergency department. The questionnaire consisted of the characteristics of the children and their caregivers, usefulness of tepid massage, and the caregivers’ preference in fever management, in particular the combination of methods and the doses of antipyretics.
Results: Among a total of 161 children, 161 were enrolled in the study, with the mean age of 5.0 years. Of the caregivers, 64.6% were in their 30s and 50.9% were parents, and 70.2% and 24.2% reported that tepid massage was “very useful” and “a little useful,” respectively. The most preferred combination of methods was “tepid massage, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen (50.9%; P < 0.001).” “Tepid massage and ibuprofen” was preferred to “tepid massage and acetaminophen (24.2% vs 7.5%).” The most preferred dose of antipyretics was 1 mL/kg/day (divided into 3 doses; 60.2%; P = 0.012), followed by 1 mL/kg/day (divided into 3 doses) plus 2 mL/dose (29.1%).
Conclusion: Caregivers may recognize tepid massage as a useful fever management. The most preferred fever management was the combination of tepid massage, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen with a dose of 1 mL/kg/day. KCI Citation Count: 1
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