BACKGROUND Rikkunshito, a traditional Japanese (Kampo) medicine, has been used to treat upper gastrointestinal disorders such as functional dyspepsia and gastroesophageal reflux. This study investigated the exposure and pharmacokinetics of the ingredients of rikkunshito in healthy volunteers. METHODS AND RESULTS First, an exploratory nonrandomized, open-label, one-period, noncrossover study u...

Surgeries for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis (LSS) aim at decompressing spinal nerves and relieving symptoms of radiculopathy or myelopathy. Frequently after surgery, stenosis may progress in adjacent spinal segments, but the etiology of adjacent segment degeneration is still unclear. It is hypothesized that surgical approaches for LSS may alter the normal biomechanics of adjacent segments, eventually ...

Motivated by recent success in growing biohybrid material from engineered tissues on synthetic polymer films, we derive a computational simulation tool for muscular thin films in cardiac repair. In this model, the polydimethylsiloxane base layer is simulated in terms of microscopically motivated tetrahedral elements. Their behavior is characterized through a volumetric contribution and a chain ...

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often show difficulties in controlling letter size and consistent letter formation during handwriting; however, there has been little research into the underlying nature of handwriting impairments in this group. The aim of this study was to assess the ability of children with ASD to regulate the size and consistency of fundamental handwriting moveme...

BACKGROUND Korea is aging faster than any other country as the 'baby boomers' grow older. The purpose of this study is to describe the health status and health services utilization of older Koreans and examine the factors that are associated with effective health services utilization. METHODS Based on the 2008 Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing which was conducted with Korean men and women a...

Bioluminescence in Vibrio fischeri ES114 is activated by autoinducer pheromones, and this regulation serves as a model for bacterial cell-cell signaling. As in other bacteria, pheromone concentration increases with cell density; however, pheromone synthesis and perception are also modulated in response to environmental stimuli. Previous studies suggested that expression of the pheromone-depende...

With the domestic and international proliferation of biobanks and their associated connections to health information databases, scholarly attention has been turning from the ethical issues arising from the construction of biobanks to the ethical issues that emerge in their operation and management. Calls for greater transparency in governance structures, coupled with stern reminders of the valu...

This paper takes a welfare-view on eastern enlargement of the EU, focusing on incumbent countries. Enlargement is decomposed into three elements: Single-market integration on commodity markets, budgetary costs from EU-expenditure policies, and single-market-induced migration from new to present member countries. I first use an analytical model to derive a welfare equation that identifies the pr...