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Human respiratory information is being used as an important source of biometric information that can enable the analysis of health status in the healthcare domain. The analysis of the frequency or duration of a specific respiration pattern and the classification of respiration patterns in the corresponding section for a certain period of time are important for the utilization of respiratory information in various ways. Existing methods require window slide processing to classify sections for each respiration pattern from the breathing data for a certain time period. In this case, when multiple respiration patterns exist within one window, the recognition rate can be lowered. To solve this problem, a 1D Siamese neural network (SNN)-based human respiration pattern detection model and a merge-and-split algorithm for the classification of multiple respiration patterns in each region for all respiration sections are proposed in this study. When calculating the accuracy based on intersection over union (IOU) for the respiration range classification result for each pattern, the accuracy was found to be improved by approximately 19.3% compared with the existing deep neural network (DNN) and 12.4% compared with a 1D convolutional neural network (CNN). The accuracy of detection based on the simple respiration pattern was approximately 14.5% higher than that of the DNN and 5.3% higher than that of the 1D CNN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adenovirus (Ad) has risen to be a promising alternative to conventional cancer therapy. However, systemic delivery of Ad, which is necessary for the treatment of metastatic cancer, remains a major challenge within the field, owing to poor tumor tropism and nonspecific hepatic tropism of the virus. To address this limitation of Ad, we have synthesized two variants of folic acid (FA)-conjugated methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly{N-[N-(2-aminoethyl)-2-aminoethyl]-L-glutamate (P5N2LG-FA and P5N5LG-FA) using 5 kDa poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) with a different level of protonation (N2 < N5 in terms of charge), along with a P5N5LG control polymer without FA. Our findings demonstrate that P5N5LG, P5N2LG-FA, and P5N5LG-FA exert a lower level of cytotoxicity compared to 25 kDa polyethyleneimine. Furthermore, green fluorescent protein (GFP)-expressing Ad complexed with P5N2LG-FA and P5N5LG-FA (Ad/P5N2LG-FA and Ad/P5N5LG-FA, respectively) exerted superior transduction efficiency compared to naked Ad or Ad complexed with P5N5LG (Ad/P5N5LG) in folate receptor (FR)-overexpressing cancer cells (KB and MCF7). All three nanocomplexes (Ad/P5N5LG, Ad/P5N2LG-FA, and Ad/P5N5LG-FA) internalized into cancer cells through coxsackie adenovirus receptor-independent endocytic mechanism and the cell uptake was more efficient than naked Ad. Importantly, the cell uptake of the two FA functionalized nanocomplexes (Ad/P5N2LG-FA and Ad/P5N5LG-FA) was dependent on the complementary interaction of FA–FR. Systemically administered Ad/P5N5LG, Ad/P5N2LG-FA, and Ad/P5N5LG-FA showed exponentially higher retainment of the virus in blood circulation up to 24 h post-administration compared with naked Ad. Both tumor-targeted nanocomplexes (Ad/P5N2LG-FA and Ad/P5N5LG-FA) showed significantly higher intratumoral accumulation than naked Ad or Ad/P5N5LG via systemic administration. Both tumor-targeted nanocomplexes accumulated at a lower level in liver tissues compared to naked Ad. Notably, the nonspecific accumulation of Ad/P5N2LG-FA was significantly lower than Ad/P5N5LG-FA in several normal organs, while exhibiting a significantly higher intratumoral accumulation level, showing that careful optimization of polyplex surface charge is critical to successful tumor-targeted systemic delivery of Ad nanocomplexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to delineate the main contributions controlling the chemical composition of groundwater and spring water samples at Jeju Island, South Korea. Groundwater and spring water can be grouped as three chemical types: Fresh water (Ca, Na-HCO3), sea water mixing (Na-Cl, SO4) and contamination (Ca-NO3, Cl). By factor analysis, three factors can explain about 87% of chemical variances: Factor 1 (Na+ and Cl−), factor 2 (NO3−), and factors 3 (HCO3−), which are regarded as indicative ions of sea water mixing, contamination and mineral-water interaction, respectively. Sea water intrusion in the southeastern area of Jeju Island is due to downward distribution of Seogwipo Formation, which plays a role as an aquiclude preventing sea water intrusion in other areas, under sea level at the southeastern coastal area. Nitrate contamination is likely to be affected by pollution sources, i.e., agricultural activities, horse farms and municipal sewage. Thermodynamic saturation index indicates that most of waters are undersaturated with respect to major minerals, which may result from insufficient reaction time within a permeable aquifer. The unsaturation state corresponds to low load scores of Ca, Mg, Na, K, and SiO2 in factor 3, which means a low contribution of mineral-water interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]