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Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common inflammatory skin disease, and its pathogenesis is closely associated with microbial homeostasis in the gut, namely the gut-skin axis. Particularly, recent metagenomics studies revealed that the abundance of two major bacterial species in the gut, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Akkermansia muciniphila, may play a critical role in the pathogenesis of AD, but the effect of these species in AD has not yet been elucidated. To evaluate the potential beneficial effect of F. prausnitzii or A. muciniphila in AD, we conducted an animal model study where F. prausnitzii EB-FPDK11 or A. muciniphila EB-AMDK19, isolated from humans, was orally administered to 2,5-dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB)-induced AD models using NC/Nga mice at a daily dose of 108 CFUs/mouse for six weeks. As a result, the administration of each strain of F. prausnitzii and A. muciniphila improved AD-related markers, such as dermatitis score, scratching behavior, and serum immunoglobulin E level. Also, the F. prausnitzii and A. muciniphila treatments decreased the level of thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), triggering the production of T helper (Th) 2 cytokines, and improved the imbalance between the Th1 and Th2 immune responses induced by DNCB. Meanwhile, the oral administration of the bacteria enhanced the production of filaggrin in the skin and ZO-1 in the gut barrier, leading to the recovery of functions. Taken together, our findings suggest that F. prausnitzii EB-FPDK11 and A. muciniphila EB-AMDK19 have a therapeutic potential in AD, which should be verified in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For last two decades, the demand for precisely engineered three-dimensional structures has increased continuously for the developments of biomaterials. With the recent advances in micro- and nano-fabrication techniques, various devices with complex surface geometries have been devised and produced in the pharmaceutical and medical fields for various biomedical applications including drug delivery and biosensors. These advanced biomaterials have been designed to mimic the natural environments of tissues more closely and to enhance the performance for their corresponding biomedical applications. One of the important aspects in the rational design of biomaterials is how to configure the surface of the biomedical devices for better control of the chemical and physical properties of the bioactive surfaces without compromising their bulk characteristics. In this viewpoint, it of critical importance to secure a versatile method to modify the surface of various biomedical devices. Recently, a vapor phase method, termed initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) has emerged as damage-free method highly beneficial for the conformal deposition of various functional polymer films onto many kinds of micro- and nano-structured surfaces without restrictions on the substrate material or geometry, which is not trivial to achieve by conventional solution-based surface functionalization methods. With proper structural design, the functional polymer thin film via iCVD can impart required functionality to the biomaterial surfaces while maintaining the fine structure thereon. We believe the iCVD technique can be not only a valuable approach towards fundamental cell-material studies, but also of great importance as a platform technology to extend to other prospective biomaterial designs and material interface modifications for biomedical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software filtering systems can be employed to detect and filter out pirated or counterfeit software on the Web sites and peer-to-peer networks. They determine whether a suspicious program is legal or not by comparing it with original programs in a database or in the market. To identify pirated or counterfeit software, software filtering systems need to measure software similarity when comparing a suspicious program with original ones. In this case, the comparison overhead might be very high because the suspicious program is compared with all programs in the database or market in the worst case. This paper proposes a software classification scheme for efficient software filtering systems. The scheme focuses specifically on the Windows portable executable files which have been prime targets for software pirates. The scheme extracts software characteristics from a suspicious program and classifies it into one of pre-defined categories quickly based on the characteristics. The suspicious program is compared only with the programs in the one of pre-defined categories in most cases; thus, the comparison overhead is reduced. We propose two classification methods. The first one extracts strings from GUI-related resources of a program and computes the relevance of the program to each category based on the pre-computed score of the strings. The second one extracts API call frequency from a program's execution codes and uses Random Forest technique to classify the program. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can classify programs effectively and can reduce the comparison overhead significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interleukin-6 (IL-6) family of cytokines plays a key role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis through the regulation of bone formation and resorption. In this study, it was observed that ethanol extract of Salvia plebeia R.Br. (S.P-EE) inhibited IL-6-induced signaling cascade including phosphorylation of JAK2/STAT3 and ERK. Subsequently, it was examined whether S.P-EE treatment could recover bone loss in ovariectomized (OVX) mice. Indeed, S.P-EE exhibited both preventive and therapeutic effect on OVX-induced bone loss in trabecular microarchitecture along with significant increase in bone mineral density and content. To understand the mechanism of action of S.P-EE in bone metabolism, the effect of S.P-EE on osteoclast differentiation and activity was investigated. S.P-EE significantly inhibited RANKL-induced osteoclast differentiation by suppressing phosphorylation of MAPK and Akt, and expression of NFATc1 and osteoclast marker genes. S.P-EE also inhibited bone-resorbing activity of osteoclasts. Furthermore, isolation and identification of the active compounds which are responsible for the inhibitory effect of S.P-EE on osteoclast differentiation was carried out. Six major flavonoids and plebeiolide A-C were isolated and examined their effects on osteoclast differentiation. Luteolin and hispidulin, and plebeiolide A and C, not B exhibited potent inhibitory activity on RANKL-induced osteoclast formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As licensed programs are pirated and illegally spread over the Internet, it is necessary to filter illegally distributed or cracked programs. The conventional software filtering systems can prevent unauthorized dissemination of the programs maintained by their databases using an exact matching method where the feature of a suspicious program is the same as that of any program stored in the database. However, the conventional filtering systems have some limitations to deal with cracked or new programs which are not maintained by their database. To address the limitations, we design and implement an efficient and intelligent software filtering system based on software similarity. Our system measures the similarity of the characteristics extracted from an original program and a suspicious one (or, a cracked one) and then determines whether the suspicious program is a cracked version of the copyrighted original program based on the similarity measure. In addition, the proposed system can handle a new program by categorizing it using a machine learning scheme. This scheme helps an unknown program to be identified by narrowing the search space. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system, we perform a series of experiments on a number of executable programs under Microsoft Windows. The experimental results show that our system has achieved comparable performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]