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Background: This study describes the development of a multi-dimensional questionnaire for the personalized recommendation of health functional foods.Methods: The questionnaire was designed to include two parts: common and detailed. Each question was formulated based on clinical evidence and physician-administered diagnostic tools provided by reputable sources such as government agencies and medical institutions. The common questions were intended to assess overall health status. The detailed questions were organized into 28 categories based on the classification of health functional foods’ health claims by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Each question’s response was evaluated on a scale from 0 to 1. The final score of each category was calculated as the sum of the scores normalized by the number of questions in each category. Two expert physicians in health functional food assessed the content validity of the questionnaire, and the questionnaire was revised accordingly.Results: A total of 31 common questions evaluated overall health conditions based on demographic information, medical history, allergies, prescription medicines, dietary habits, and lifestyle. A question that surveys interest areas was also included to let the responders choose up to three categories for the detailed question part. A total of 173 detailed questions assessed risk factors and symptoms relevant to each health claim.Conclusions: This questionnaire recommends health functional foods by measuring health risks and symptoms, following the classification of health functional foods by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. This questionnaire may serve as an evidence-based information collecting tool for a personalized health functional foods recommendation system.

Ferroelectric BiFeO 3 thin films with Nd–Cr (or Sm–Cr) co-substitution (denoted by BNdFCr and BSmFCr, respectively) were deposited on the Pt(2 0 0)/TiO 2 /SiO 2 /Si(1 0 0) substrates by a chemical solution deposition method. X-ray diffraction patterns revealed the formation of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films without any secondary phases. The co-substituted BNdFCr (or BSmFCr) thin films, which were annealed at 550 °C for 30 min in N 2 atmosphere, exhibited enhanced electrical properties compared to BFO thin films with the remanent polarization (2 P r ) and coercive electric field (2 E c ) of 196, 188 μC/cm 2 and 600, 570 kV/cm with the electric field of 800 kV/cm, respectively. The leakage current densities of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films measured at room temperature were approximately three orders of magnitude lower than that of BFO thin film, and the leakage current at room temperature of the thin films exhibited three distinctive conduction behaviors. Furthermore, the values of pulse polarizations [i.e., +( P *– P ^ ) or −( P *– P ^ )] of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films were reasonably unchanged up to 1.4 × 10 10 switching cycles.

It is required to develop a highly reliable attitude & orbit control system of satellite that is less expensive as the technology of satellite design & integration is recently matured dramatically. To accomodate this kind of needs, the two axis attitude control method for wheel-based momentum-biased satellite system whose momentum bias vector points to a certain direction(sun direction), is developed using simple but reliable sensors and actuator: three axis magnetometer and coarse sun sensor are used as sensors, and magnetic torque bars are used as actuator. Classical PD type controller design methodologies are applied on a satellite system for the two axis control with the proper assumptions. Nonlinear simulation results are included to demonstrate the long term stability and the performance of closed-loop system design results.

End-stage ischemic cardiomyopathy patients are an ever-increasing group of coronary artery disease patients, often with no options in our current treatment armamentarium. Angiogenesis therapy pre-clinical and phase I clinical trials showed great promise, however, the benefits of single growth factor treatments have not been borne out in the larger phase II randomized trials. The complexity of angiogenesis process and the challenges in creating animal models to replicate and study this process in ischemic adult human myocardium have been major limitations to progress in this field. In addition failure to control for the powerful placebo effect in the clinical trials and inadequate methods of outcomes measures assessment have created difficult to overcome road blocks in establishing the efficacy of angiogenic strategies. Herein we review the challenges of angiogenesis research and development of treatment strategies. We also propose a structured model for further investigations of angiogenic therapies. The adherence to such a regimented approach as proposed here is, in our opinion, the only way to achieve success in angiogenesis approach development to treatment of patients with end-stage cardiac ischemia refractory to other established therapies.

The attitude determination in LEO Satellite like KOMPSAT is one of the most important issues for Sun-Acquisition. Particularly, in KOMPSAT, the roll axis direction can be determined since the sun sensor gives the information on the Euler angle for pitch and yaw axes in Sun-Acquisition mode. In other words, it is the problem to determine the two unknown axes direction with one axis knowledge. This paper proposes a new effective method for attitude determination of general LEO satellites when one axis information is avilable and proves its usefulness throughout the simulation.

Background— Cell therapy for myocardial infarction (MI) may be limited by poor cell survival and lack of transdifferentiation. We report a novel technique of implanting whole autologous myocardial tissue from preserved myocardial regions into infarcted regions. Methods and Results— Fourteen rats were used to optimize cardiomyotissue size with peritoneal wall implantation (300 μm identified as optimal size). Thirty-nine pigs were used to investigate cardiomyotissue implantation in MI induced by left anterior descending balloon occlusion (10 animals died; male-to-female transplantation for tracking with in situ hybridization for Y chromosome, n=4 [2 donors and 2 MI animals]; acute MI implantation cohort at 1 hour, n=13; and healed MI implantation at 2 weeks, n=12). Assessment included echocardiography, magnetic resonance imaging, hemodynamics, triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining, and histological and molecular analyses. Tracking studies demonstrated viable implants with donor cells interspersed in the adjacent myocardium with gap junctions and desmosomes. In the acute MI cohort, treated animals compared with controls had improved perfusion by magnetic resonance imaging (1.2±0.01 versus 0.86±0.05; P P =0.04; triphenyltetrazolium chloride: anterior wall, 10.3±4.6% versus 28.9±5.8%, P P P P =0.006) than control animals. Infarcts in the treated animals contained more mdr-1 + cells and fewer c-kit + cells with a trend for decreased expression of matrix metalloproteinase-2 and increased expression of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-2. Conclusion— Autologous cardiomyotissue implanted in an MI area remains viable, exhibits electromechanical coupling, decreases infarct size, and improves left ventricular function.

Effective local delivery to the heart remains an obstacle to successful therapeutic application of a number of drugs and biological agents. This study was designed to study and optimize the delivery characteristics of transendocardial intramyocardial (IM) administration, determine myocardial deposition and retention over time, and compare it to transepicardial IM injection. Thirty-nine pigs were used for the study (15 for catheter optimization, 15 for transendocardial IM delivery, and 9 for transepicardial IM delivery). (125)I-Fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) (25 microCi) was used as the prototype molecule. Tissue and myocardial distribution was determined at 1 and 24 h and 7 days. Using 1-h (125)I-FGF2 myocardial deposition as a parameter for delivery efficiency, the optimal needle length and delivery volume for transendocardial based delivery were determined to be 6 mm and 0.1 ml, respectively. Using these parameters for endocardial delivery, (125)I-FGF2 cardiac activity was 18.01 +/- 3.84% of delivered activity at 1 h, 11.65 +/- 5.17% at 24 h, and 2.32 +/- 0.87% at 7 days in ischemic animals. Studies in nonischemic animals produced similar results. For transepicardial delivery, (125)I-FGF2 cardiac-specific activity was 23.14 +/- 12.67% for the 6-mm needle, declining to 12.32 +/- 8.50% at 24 h, and did not significantly differ from values obtained following transendocardial delivery. Thus, optimized transendocardial intramyocardial delivery using Biosense guidance results in efficient delivery of FGF2 to the target myocardium that is comparable with transepicardial delivery, both providing markedly higher myocardial deposition and retention and lower systemic recirculation of FGF2 than intracoronary, intrapericardial, or intravenous delivery. However, myocardial distribution is limited to injection sites.

Ferroelectric Cr-doped BiFeO3 (BFCr) thin films having a rhombohedrally distorted simple perovskite structure were fabricated on the p-type Si (100) substrate by the chemical solution deposition technique. The microstructures and the surface morphologies of BFCr thin films on the p-type Si (100) annealed at 550 °C for 30 min in nitrogen atmosphere were examined by an x-ray diffractometer and a scanning electron microscope, respectively. The capacitance-voltage (C−V) curves for BFCr thin film as the clockwise ferroelectric hysteresis loop were observed. Furthermore, the C−V characteristics for the metal-ferroelectrics-semiconductor structured BFCr thin films were measured as functions of the voltage and the frequency. From these results, the fixed charge density Nfc was calculated as 5.3×1011 cm−2. The leakage current characteristics of BFCr thin films were also measured by a thermally stimulated current measurement. Using the current-voltage curves, the current conduction mechanism of BFCr thin films on t...