Objectives This study utilized the method of medical record review to determine characteristics of adverse events that occurred in the inpatient units of hospitals in Korea as well as the variations in adverse events between institutions. Design A two-stage retrospective medical record review was conducted. The first stage was a nurse review, where two nurses reviewed medical records of discharged patients to determine if screening criteria had been met. In the second stage, two physicians independently reviewed medical records of patients identified in the first stage, to determine whether an adverse event had occurred. Setting Inpatient units of six hospitals. Participants Medical records of 2,596 patients randomly selected were reviewed in the first stage review. Intervention(s) N/A. Main Outcome Measure(s) Adverse events. Results A total of 277 patients (10.7%) were confirmed to have had one or more adverse event(s), and a total of 336 adverse events were identified. Physician reviewers agreed about whether an adverse event had occurred for 141 patients (5.4%). The incidence rate of adverse events was at least 1.3% and a maximum of 19.4% for each hospital. Most preventability scores were less than four points (non-preventable), and there were large variations between reviewers and institutions. Conclusions Given the level of variation in the identified adverse events, further studies that include more medical institutions in their investigations are needed, and a third-party committee should be involved to address the reliability issues regarding the occurrence and characteristics of the adverse events.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent degenerative disease, which involves progressive and irreversible destruction of cartilage matrix. Despite efforts to reconstruct cartilage matrix in osteoarthritic joints, it has been a difficult task as adult cartilage exhibits marginal repair capacity. Here we report the identification of tankyrase as a regulator of the cartilage anabolism axis based on systems-level factor analysis of mouse reference populations. Tankyrase inhibition drives the expression of a cartilage-signature matrisome and elicits a transcriptomic pattern that is inversely correlated with OA progression. Furthermore, tankyrase inhibitors ameliorate surgically induced OA in mice, and stem cell transplantation coupled with tankyrase knockdown results in superior regeneration of cartilage lesions. Mechanistically, the pro-regenerative features of tankyrase inhibition are mainly triggered by uncoupling SOX9 from a poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation (PARylation)-dependent protein degradation pathway. Our findings provide insights into the development of future OA therapies aimed at reconstruction of articular cartilage.

The use of natural gas (NG) as an energy source is increasing. This paper studies the safety-zone layout design of a floating power plant fueled by NG. Hazards from the unwanted release of liquefied NG (LNG) in bunkering or NG in operation always exist, and it is thus important to reduce the associated risk to an acceptable level. One engineering technique used to reduce this risk involves the design of a safety zone to prevent and minimize exposures that may occur during unwanted release of LNG or NG. Industry practices are available for the design of the layout of such safety-zones, but their applicability to floating power plants is uncertain, and a more intuitive approach is required. The objective of this study is to discuss the challenges of establishing safety zones on floating power plants by reviewing and comparing existing industrial practices and to propose a hybrid approach for the design of a safety-zone layout. The applicability of the proposed hybrid approach is discussed with an applied example.

Real time sensing of crop yield is critical for a successful implementation of precision agriculture. Yield monitoring system is an optional component of a 55 kW multipurpose combine harvester, developed in Korea, for both domestic and global markets, especially Asian countries where field sizes are relatively small. The aim of the present study was to fabricate and evaluate the performance of a grain flow sensor suitable to the mid-sized full-feed type combine for rice, soybean, and barley. Firstly, commercially available non-contact type sensing modules (optical, ultrasonic, laser, and microwave modules) were chosen for alternative candidates, to be further tested in a laboratory bench. Through the laboratory tests, the ultrasonic module was selected as a potential approach and the performance was improved by increasing the number of modules and their layout. Finally, the improved grain flow sensor was evaluated during field harvesting operation. Field tests with the improved grain flow sensor showed a good potential for rice (R 2 =0.85, RMSE=126.14 g/s), soybean (R 2 =0.78, RMSE=43.87 g/s), and barley (R 2 =0.83, RMSE=37.39 g/s). Further research would be necessary for improvement and commercialization, through various signal processing and field tests under different field and crop conditions.