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Studies on the Kiln Drying Characteristics of Several Commercial Woods of Korea (국산 유용 수종재의 인공건조 특성에 관한 연구)

  • Chung, Byung-Jae
    • Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.8-12
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    • 1974
  • 1. If one unity is given to the prongs whose ends touch each other for estimating the internal stresses occuring in it, the internal stresses which are developed in the open prongs can be evaluated by the ratio to the unity. In accordance with the above statement, an equation was derived as follows. For employing this equation, the prongs should be made as shown in Fig. I, and be measured A and B' as indicated in Fig. l. A more precise value will result as the angle (J becomes smaller. $CH=\frac{(A-B') (4W+A) (4W-A)}{2A[(2W+(A-B')][2W-(A-B')]}{\times}100%$ where A is thickness of the prong, B' is the distance between the two prongs shown in Fig. 1 and CH is the value of internal stress expressed by percentage. It precision is not required, the equation can be simplified as follows. $CH=\frac{A-B'}{A}{\times}200%$ 2. Under scheduled drying condition III the kiln, when the weight of a sample board is constant, the moisture content of the shell of a sample board in the case of a normal casehardening is lower than that of the equilibrium moisture content which is indicated by the Forest Products Laboratory, U. S. Department of Agriculture. This result is usually true, especially in a thin sample board. A thick unseasoned or reverse casehardened sample does not follow in the above statement. 3. The results in the comparison of drying rate with five different kinds of wood given in Table 1 show that the these drying rates, i.e., the quantity of water evaporated from the surface area of I centimeter square per hour, are graded by the order of their magnitude as follows. (1) Ginkgo biloba Linne (2) Diospyros Kaki Thumberg. (3) Pinus densiflora Sieb. et Zucc. (4) Larix kaempheri Sargent (5) Castanea crenata Sieb. et Zucc. It is shown, for example, that at the moisture content of 20 percent the highest value revealed by the Ginkgo biloba is in the order of 3.8 times as great as that for Castanea crenata Sieb. & Zucc. which has the lowest value. Especially below the moisture content of 26 percent, the drying rate, i.e., the function of moisture content in percentage, is represented by the linear equation. All of these linear equations are highly significant in testing the confficient of X i. e., moisture content in percentage. In the Table 2, the symbols are expressed as follows; Y is the quantity of water evaporated from the surface area of 1 centimeter square per hour, and X is the moisture content of the percentage. The drying rate is plotted against the moisture content of the percentage as in Fig. 2. 4. One hundred times the ratio(P%) of the number of samples occuring in the CH 4 class (from 76 to 100% of CH ratio) within the total number of saplmes tested to those of the total which underlie the given SR ratio is measured in Table 3. (The 9% indicated above is assumed as the danger probability in percentage). In summarizing above results, the conclusion is in Table 4. NOTE: In Table 4, the column numbers such as 1. 2 and 3 imply as follows, respectively. 1) The minimum SR ratio which does not reveal the CH 4, class is indicated as in the column 1. 2) The extent of SR ratio which is confined in the safety allowance of 30 percent is shown in the column 2. 3) The lowest limitation of SR ratio which gives the most danger probability of 100 percent is shown in column 3. In analyzing above results, it is clear that chestnut and larch easly form internal stress in comparison with persimmon and pine. However, in considering the fact that the revers, casehardening occured in fir and ginkgo, under the same drying condition with the others, it is deduced that fir and ginkgo form normal casehardening with difficulty in comparison with the other species tested. 5. All kinds of drying defects except casehardening are developed when the internal stresses are in excess of the ultimate strength of material in the case of long-lime loading. Under the drying condition at temperature of $170^{\circ}F$ and the lower humidity. the drying defects are not so severe. However, under the same conditions at $200^{\circ}F$, the lower humidity and not end coated, all sample boards develop severe drying defects. Especially the chestnut was very prone to form the drying defects such as casehardening and splitting.

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Optimization of Multiclass Support Vector Machine using Genetic Algorithm: Application to the Prediction of Corporate Credit Rating (유전자 알고리즘을 이용한 다분류 SVM의 최적화: 기업신용등급 예측에의 응용)

  • Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.161-177
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    • 2014
  • Corporate credit rating assessment consists of complicated processes in which various factors describing a company are taken into consideration. Such assessment is known to be very expensive since domain experts should be employed to assess the ratings. As a result, the data-driven corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. In particular, statistical methods such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and multinomial logistic regression analysis (MLOGIT), and AI methods including case-based reasoning (CBR), artificial neural network (ANN), and multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have been applied to corporate credit rating.2) Among them, MSVM has recently become popular because of its robustness and high prediction accuracy. In this study, we propose a novel optimized MSVM model, and appy it to corporate credit rating prediction in order to enhance the accuracy. Our model, named 'GAMSVM (Genetic Algorithm-optimized Multiclass Support Vector Machine),' is designed to simultaneously optimize the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection. Prior studies like Lorena and de Carvalho (2008), and Chatterjee (2013) show that proper kernel parameters may improve the performance of MSVMs. Also, the results from the studies such as Shieh and Yang (2008) and Chatterjee (2013) imply that appropriate feature selection may lead to higher prediction accuracy. Based on these prior studies, we propose to apply GAMSVM to corporate credit rating prediction. As a tool for optimizing the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection, we suggest genetic algorithm (GA). GA is known as an efficient and effective search method that attempts to simulate the biological evolution phenomenon. By applying genetic operations such as selection, crossover, and mutation, it is designed to gradually improve the search results. Especially, mutation operator prevents GA from falling into the local optima, thus we can find the globally optimal or near-optimal solution using it. GA has popularly been applied to search optimal parameters or feature subset selections of AI techniques including MSVM. With these reasons, we also adopt GA as an optimization tool. To empirically validate the usefulness of GAMSVM, we applied it to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. Our application is in bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. The experimental dataset was collected from a large credit rating company in South Korea. It contained 39 financial ratios of 1,295 companies in the manufacturing industry, and their credit ratings. Using various statistical methods including the one-way ANOVA and the stepwise MDA, we selected 14 financial ratios as the candidate independent variables. The dependent variable, i.e. credit rating, was labeled as four classes: 1(A1); 2(A2); 3(A3); 4(B and C). 80 percent of total data for each class was used for training, and remaining 20 percent was used for validation. And, to overcome small sample size, we applied five-fold cross validation to our dataset. In order to examine the competitiveness of the proposed model, we also experimented several comparative models including MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, ANN and MSVM. In case of MSVM, we adopted One-Against-One (OAO) and DAGSVM (Directed Acyclic Graph SVM) approaches because they are known to be the most accurate approaches among various MSVM approaches. GAMSVM was implemented using LIBSVM-an open-source software, and Evolver 5.5-a commercial software enables GA. Other comparative models were experimented using various statistical and AI packages such as SPSS for Windows, Neuroshell, and Microsoft Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Experimental results showed that the proposed model-GAMSVM-outperformed all the competitive models. In addition, the model was found to use less independent variables, but to show higher accuracy. In our experiments, five variables such as X7 (total debt), X9 (sales per employee), X13 (years after founded), X15 (accumulated earning to total asset), and X39 (the index related to the cash flows from operating activity) were found to be the most important factors in predicting the corporate credit ratings. However, the values of the finally selected kernel parameters were found to be almost same among the data subsets. To examine whether the predictive performance of GAMSVM was significantly greater than those of other models, we used the McNemar test. As a result, we found that GAMSVM was better than MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, and ANN at the 1% significance level, and better than OAO and DAGSVM at the 5% significance level.

A Characterization of Oil Sand Reservoir and Selections of Optimal SAGD Locations Based on Stochastic Geostatistical Predictions (지구통계 기법을 이용한 오일샌드 저류층 해석 및 스팀주입중력법을 이용한 비투멘 회수 적지 선정 사전 연구)

  • Jeong, Jina;Park, Eungyu
    • Economic and Environmental Geology
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    • v.46 no.4
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    • pp.313-327
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    • 2013
  • In the study, three-dimensional geostatistical simulations on McMurray Formation which is the largest oil sand reservoir in Athabasca area, Canada were performed, and the optimal site for steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) was selected based on the predictions. In the selection, the factors related to the vertical extendibility of steam chamber were considered as the criteria for an optimal site. For the predictions, 110 borehole data acquired from the study area were analyzed in the Markovian transition probability (TP) framework and three-dimensional distributions of the composing media were predicted stochastically through an existing TP based geostatistical model. The potential of a specific medium at a position within the prediction domain was estimated from the ensemble probability based on the multiple realizations. From the ensemble map, the cumulative thickness of the permeable media (i.e. Breccia and Sand) was analyzed and the locations with the highest potential for SAGD applications were delineated. As a supportive criterion for an optimal SAGD site, mean vertical extension of a unit permeable media was also delineated through transition rate based computations. The mean vertical extension of a permeable media show rough agreement with the cumulative thickness in their general distribution. However, the distributions show distinctive disagreement at a few locations where the cumulative thickness was higher due to highly alternating juxtaposition of the permeable and the less permeable media. This observation implies that the cumulative thickness alone may not be a sufficient criterion for an optimal SAGD site and the mean vertical extension of the permeable media needs to be jointly considered for the sound selections.

Relationship between Brand Personality and the Personality of Consumers, and its Application to Corporate Branding Strategy

  • Kim, Young-Ei;Lee, Jung-Wan;Lee, Yong-Ki
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.27-57
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    • 2008
  • Many consumers enjoy the challenge of purchasing a brand that matches well with their own values and personalities (for example, Ko et al., 2008; Ko et al., 2006). Therefore, the personalities of consumers can impact on the final selection of a brand and its brand personality in two ways: first, the consumers may incline to purchase a brand or a product that reflects their own personalities; second, consumers tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those brands that are being promoted. Therefore, the objectives of this study are following: 1. Is there any empirical relationship between a consumer's personality and the personality of a brand that he or she chooses? 2. Can a corporate brand be differentiated by the brand personality? In short, consumers are more likely to hold favorable attitudes towards those brands that match their own personality and will most probably purchase those brands matching well with their personality. For example, Matzler et al. (2006) found that extraversion and openness were positively related to hedonic product value; and that the personality traits directly (openness) and indirectly (extraversion, via hedonic value) influenced brand effects, which in turn droved attitudinal and purchase loyalty. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: Hypothesis 1: the personality of a consumer is related to the brand personality of a product/corporate that he/she purchases. Kuksov (2007) and Wernerfelt (1990) argued that brands as a symbolic language allowed consumers to communicate their types to each other and postulated that consumers had a certain value of communicating their types to each other. Therefore, how brand meanings are established, and how a firm communicate with consumers about the meanings of the brand are interesting topics for research (for example, Escalas and Bettman, 2005; McCracken, 1989; Moon, 2007). Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: A corporate brand identity is differentiated by the brand personality. And there are significant differences among companies. A questionnaire was developed for collecting empirical measures of the Big-Five personality traits and brand personality variables. A survey was conducted to the online access panel members through the Internet during December 2007 in Korea. In total, 500 respondents completed the questionnaire, and considered as useable. Personality constructs were measured using the Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) scale and a total of 30 items were actually utilized. Brand personality was measured using the five-dimension scale developed by Aaker (1997). A total of 17 items were actually utilized. The seven-point Likert-type scale was the format of responses, for example, from 1 indicating strongly disagreed to 7 for strongly agreed. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) was used for an empirical testing of the model, and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) was applied to estimate numerical values for the components in the model. To diagnose the presence of distribution problems in the data and to gauge their effects on the parameter estimates, bootstapping method was used. The results of the hypothesis-1 test empirically show that there exit certain causality relationship between a consumer's personality and the brand personality of the consumer's choice. Thus, the consumer's personality has an impact on consumer's final selection of a brand that has a brand personality matches well with their own personalities. In other words, the consumers are inclined to purchase a brand that reflects their own personalities and tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those of the brand being promoted. The results of this study further suggest that certain dimensions of the brand personality cause consumers to have preference to certain (corporate) brands. For example, the conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion of the consumer personality have positively related to a selection of "ruggedness" characteristics of the brand personality. Consumers who possess that personality dimension seek for matching with certain brand personality dimensions. Results of the hypothesis-2 test show that the average "ruggedness" attributes of the brand personality differ significantly among Korean automobile manufacturers. However, the result of ANOVA also indicates that there are no significant differences in the mean values among manufacturers for the "sophistication," "excitement," "competence" and "sincerity" attributes of the corporate brand personality. The tight link between what a firm is and its corporate brand means that there is far less room for marketing communications than there is with products and brands. Consequently, successful corporate brand strategies must position the organization within the boundaries of what is acceptable, while at the same time differentiating the organization from its competitors.

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Distribution and Bacteriological Characteristics of Vibrio vulnificus (Vibrio vulnificus 균의 분포 및 세균학적 특성)

  • CHANG Dong-Suck;SHIN Il-Shik;CHOI Seung-Tae;KIM Young-Man
    • Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.118-126
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    • 1986
  • Vibrio vulnificus is a recently recognized halophilic organism that nay cause serious human infections. Patients infected with V. vulnificus often have a history of exposure to the sea, suggesting that the organism may be common inhabitant of marine environment. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the distribution and bacteriological characteristics of V. vulnificus. The strain used in this experiment was isolated from sea water and sea products such as common octopus (Octopus variabilis), ark shell (Anadara broughtonii), blue crab (Ericheir japonica), and sea squirt (Synthia roretzi) collected in Pusan area from July to October in 1985. V. vulnificus was frequently isolated in August when temperature of sea water was around $26^{\circ}C$ and rarely isolated in October when temperature of sea water was around $18.5^{\circ}C$. The distinctive biochemical characteristics of V. vulnificus were ONPG hydrolysis positive and fermented lactose and not grown in peptone water contained $8\%$ NaCl. The optical density at 660 nm of the growth of V. vulnificus was reached maximum level after 8 hours of culture at $35^{\circ}C$ in brain heart infusion broth but that of V. vulnificus was little increased at $15^{\circ}C$ for 14 hours. Optimum temperature and pH for the growth of V. vulnificus were around $35^{\circ}C$ and 8.0. The specific growth rate and the generation time of V. vulnificus isolated from the samples were $1.21\;hr^{-1}$, 34 min at $35^{\circ}C$ and $0.61\;hr^{-1}$, 69 min at $25^{\circ}C$, respectively. V. vulnificus did not grow on eosin-methylene-blue agar, salmonella-shigella agar, deoxycholate agar but grew well on Endo agar, xylose-lysine-deoxycholate agar and hektoen enteric agar. On Endo agar, the colonies of V. vulnificus were red and achieved a diameter of 2 to 4 mm as a feature enabling differentiation of V. vulnificus from other Vibrio spp. V. vulnificus grow well on TCBS agar forming green colonies. V. vulnificus refrigerated at $4^{\circ}C$ exhibited a linear decline of its viablity as 1 log cycle in every 16 hours storage, while V. vulnificus freezed at $-18^{\circ}C$ almost became extinct.

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The Effect of Hotel Employee's Service Orientation on Service Performance, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment (호텔기업 종업원의 서비스지향성이 서비스 성과, 직무만족과 조직몰입에 미치는 영향)

  • Park, Dae-Hwan
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.1-22
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    • 2007
  • Customer satisfaction is important in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace. This implies that customer service is a critical factor for many organizations. In service encounter context, customer satisfaction is affected by employees' attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly, service firms have been focusing on selecting high quality of service employees, which resulted the ability to identify and select quality service- or customer- oriented employees to become critical for an organization's success. It was suggested that customer service orientation links to performance and subsequent organizational revenue. Moreover, it was found that service encounter failures were among the major reasons for customers' service switch. Therefore, the selection of customer service oriented employees is a key factor in establishing customer service - a potential source of sustained competitive advantage. However, the measurement of employee service orientation is more confusing than that of definitive answers. The difficulty of measuring service orientation is attributed to the use of broad versus narrow measures of personality. Advocates for the broad perspective prefer using basic personality constructs, such as the Big Five personality traits. On the contrary, the latter prefer a construct-oriented approach of personality research that provides a better measure of job performance because it requires the specification of the relationship of the personality traits with multiple dimensions of job performance. The customer service orientation was defined as "a set of basic individual predispositions and an inclination to provide service, to be courteous and to be helpful in dealing with customers and associates." Similarly, it is a fact that the Big five personality traits are predictors of customer orientation, and employee's self- and supervisor performance. They propose that basic personality traits may be too far removed from focal service behaviors to be able to predict specific service behaviors (customer orientation) and service worker performance. Also, customer orientation is defined as "an employee's tendency or predisposition to meet customer needs in an on-the-job context." This means that people who have job-relevant personality traits such as concern, empathy, and conscientiousness will be more adept at customer service than people who do not possess these traits. However, little attention has been given to the exploration of the service orientation of customer-contact employees who play a key role in creating satisfactory service encounters in the hospitality industry except for Kim, McCahon, & Miller (2003)'s study, especially in family restaurants context. Thus, the purposes of this study are to examine and validate the customer service orientation of customer-contact employees using the instrument developed by Donavan (1999) in Korean family restaurants, because the scale was developed to measure the personality traits related job behaviors. And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). For these purposes the author developed several hypotheses as follows: H1: Employee's service orientation is associated with service performance. H2: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with job satisfaction. H3: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with organizational commitment. H4: Service performance is positively associated with job satisfaction. H5: Service performance is positively associated with organizational commitment. H6: Job satisfaction is negatively associated with organizational commitment. The data were collected from 278 employees in 5 deluxe hotels located in Pusan, Korea. The researcher contacted the manager of the restaurants, and managers consented to administer surveys to their employees. The survey was executed during one month period in the October of 2007. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.7 W. The result of the overall model analysis appeared as follows: $X^2$=122.638 (p = 0.00), df=59, GFI=.936, AGFI=.901, NFI=.948, CFI=.971, RMSEA=.0625. Since the result of the overall model analysis demonstrated a good fit, we could further analyze our data. The findings can be summarized as follows: First, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the service performance. Second, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the job satisfaction. Third, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the organizational commitment. Fourth, the greater the service performance, the greater the job satisfaction. Fifth, the greater the service performance, the greater the organizational commitment. Finally, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater the organizational commitment. Seventh, the greater the customer satisfaction, the greater the customer loyalty.

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An Empirical Study on the Influencing Factors of Perceived Job Performance in the Context of Enterprise Mobile Applications (업무성과에 영향을 주는 업무용 모바일 어플리케이션의 주요 요인에 관한 연구)

  • Chung, Sunghun;Kim, Kimin
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.31-50
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    • 2014
  • The ubiquitous accessibility of information through mobile devices has led to an increased mobility of workers from their fixed workplaces. Market researchers estimate that by 2016, 350 million workers will be using their smartphones for business purposes, and the use of smartphones will offer new business benefits. Enterprises are now adopting mobile technologies for numerous applications to increase their operational efficiency, improve their responsiveness and competitiveness, and cultivate their innovativeness. For these reasons, various organizational aspects concerning "mobile work" have received a great deal of recent attention. Moreover, many CIOs plan to allocate a considerable amount of their budgets mobile work environments. In particular, with the consumerization of information technology, enterprise mobile applications (EMA) have played a significant role in the explosive growth of mobile computing in the workplace, and even in improving sales for firms in this field. EMA can be defined as mobile technologies and role-based applications, as companies design them for specific roles and functions in organizations. Technically, EMA can be defined as business enterprise systems, including critical business functions that enable users to access enterprise systems via wireless mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Specifically, EMA enables employees to have greater access to real-time information, and provides them with simple features and functionalities that are easy for them to complete specific tasks. While the impact of EMA on organizational workers' productivity has been given considerable attention in various literatures, relatively little research effort has been made to examine how EMA actually lead to users' job performance. In particular, we have a limited understanding of what the key antecedents are of such an EMA usage outcome. In this paper, we focus on employees' perceived job performance as the outcome of EMA use, which indicates the successful role of EMA with regard to employees' tasks. Thus, to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship among EMA, its environment, and employees' perceived job performance, we develop a comprehensive model that considers the perceived-fit between EMA and employees' tasks, satisfaction on EMA, and the organizational environment. With this model, we try to examine EMA to explain how job performance through EMA is revealed from both the task-technology fit for EMA and satisfaction on EMA, while also considering the antecedent factors for these constructs. The objectives of this study are to address the following research questions: (1) How can employees successfully manage EMA in order to enhance their perceived job performance? (2) What internal and/or external factors are important antecedents in increasing EMA users' satisfaction on MES and task-technology fit for EMA? (3) What are the impacts of organizational (e.g. organizational agility), and task-related antecedents (e.g., task mobility) on task-technology fit for EMA? (4) What are the impacts of internal (e.g., self-efficacy) and external antecedents (e.g., system reputation) for the habitual use of EMA? Based on a survey from 254 actual employees who use EMA in their workplace across industries, our results indicate that task-technology fit for EMA and satisfaction on EMA are positively associated with job performance. We also identify task mobility, organizational agility, and system accessibility that are found to be positively associated with task-technology fit for EMA. Further, we find that external factor, such as the reputation of EMA, and internal factor, such as self-efficacy for EMA that are found to be positively associated with the satisfaction of EMA. The present findings enable researchers and practitioners to understand the role of EMA, which facilitates organizational workers' efficient work processes, as well as the importance of task-technology fit for EMA. Our model provides a new set of antecedents and consequence variables for a TAM involving mobile applications. The research model also provides empirical evidence that EMA are important mobile services that positively influence individuals' performance. Our findings suggest that perceived organizational agility and task mobility do have a significant influence on task-technology fit for EMA usage through positive beliefs about EMA, that self-efficacy and system reputation can also influence individuals' satisfaction on EMA, and that these factors are important contingent factors for the impact of system satisfaction and perceived job performance. Our findings can help managers gauge the impact of EMA in terms of its contribution to job performance. Our results provide an explanation as to why many firms have recently adopted EMA for efficient business processes and productivity support. Our findings additionally suggest that the cognitive fit between task and technology can be an important requirement for the productivity support of EMA. Further, our study findings can help managers in formulating their strategies and building organizational culture that can affect employees perceived job performance. Managers, thus, can tailor their dependence on EMA as high or low, depending on their task's characteristics, to maximize the job performance in the workplace. Overall, this study strengthens our knowledge regarding the impact of mobile applications in organizational contexts, technology acceptance and the role of task characteristics. To conclude, we hope that our research inspires future studies exploring digital productivity in the workplace and/or taking the role of EMA into account for employee job performance.

Value of Information Technology Outsourcing: An Empirical Analysis of Korean Industries (IT 아웃소싱의 가치에 관한 연구: 한국 산업에 대한 실증분석)

  • Han, Kun-Soo;Lee, Kang-Bae
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.115-137
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    • 2010
  • Information technology (IT) outsourcing, the use of a third-party vendor to provide IT services, started in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Korea, and has increased rapidly since 2000. Recently, firms have increased their efforts to capture greater value from IT outsourcing. To date, there have been a large number of studies on IT outsourcing. Most prior studies on IT outsourcing have focused on outsourcing practices and decisions, and little attention has been paid to objectively measuring the value of IT outsourcing. In addition, studies that examined the performance of IT outsourcing have mainly relied on anecdotal evidence or practitioners' perceptions. Our study examines the contribution of IT outsourcing to economic growth in Korean industries over the 1990 to 2007 period, using a production function framework and a panel data set for 54 industries constructed from input-output tables, fixed-capital formation tables, and employment tables. Based on the framework and estimation procedures that Han, Kauffman and Nault (2010) used to examine the economic impact of IT outsourcing in U.S. industries, we evaluate the impact of IT outsourcing on output and productivity in Korean industries. Because IT outsourcing started to grow at a significantly more rapid pace in 2000, we compare the impact of IT outsourcing in pre- and post-2000 periods. Our industry-level panel data cover a large proportion of Korean economy-54 out of 58 Korean industries. This allows us greater opportunity to assess the impacts of IT outsourcing on objective performance measures, such as output and productivity. Using IT outsourcing and IT capital as our primary independent variables, we employ an extended Cobb-Douglas production function in which both variables are treated as factor inputs. We also derive and estimate a labor productivity equation to assess the impact of our IT variables on labor productivity. We use data from seven years (1990, 1993, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007) for which both input-output tables and fixed-capital formation tables are available. Combining the input-output tables and fixed-capital formation tables resulted in 54 industries. IT outsourcing is measured as the value of computer-related services purchased by each industry in a given year. All the variables have been converted to 2000 Korean Won using GDP deflators. To calculate labor hours, we use the average work hours for each sector provided by the OECD. To effectively control for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation present in our dataset, we use the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) procedures. Because the AR1 process may be industry-specific (i.e., panel-specific), we consider both common AR1 and panel-specific AR1 (PSAR1) processes in our estimations. We also include year dummies to control for year-specific effects common across industries, and sector dummies (as defined in the GDP deflator) to control for time-invariant sector-specific effects. Based on the full sample of 378 observations, we find that a 1% increase in IT outsourcing is associated with a 0.012~0.014% increase in gross output and a 1% increase in IT capital is associated with a 0.024~0.027% increase in gross output. To compare the contribution of IT outsourcing relative to that of IT capital, we examined gross marginal product (GMP). The average GMP of IT outsourcing was 6.423, which is substantially greater than that of IT capital at 2.093. This indicates that on average if an industry invests KRW 1 millon, it can increase its output by KRW 6.4 million. In terms of the contribution to labor productivity, we find that a 1% increase in IT outsourcing is associated with a 0.009~0.01% increase in labor productivity while a 1% increase in IT capital is associated with a 0.024~0.025% increase in labor productivity. Overall, our results indicate that IT outsourcing has made positive and economically meaningful contributions to output and productivity in Korean industries over the 1990 to 2007 period. The average GMP of IT outsourcing we report about Korean industries is 1.44 times greater than that in U.S. industries reported in Han et al. (2010). Further, we find that the contribution of IT outsourcing has been significantly greater in the 2000~2007 period during which the growth of IT outsourcing accelerated. Our study provides implication for policymakers and managers. First, our results suggest that Korean industries can capture further benefits by increasing investments in IT outsourcing. Second, our analyses and results provide a basis for managers to assess the impact of investments in IT outsourcing and IT capital in an objective and quantitative manner. Building on our study, future research should examine the impact of IT outsourcing at a more detailed industry level and the firm level.

An International Collaborative Program To Discover New Drugs from Tropical Biodiversity of Vietnam and Laos

  • Soejarto, Djaja D.;Pezzuto, John M.;Fong, Harry H.S.;Tan, Ghee Teng;Zhang, Hong Jie;Tamez, Pamela;Aydogmus, Zeynep;Chien, Nguyen Quyet;Franzblau, Scott G.;Gyllenhaal, Charlotte;Regalado, Jacinto C.;Hung, Nguyen Van;Hoang, Vu Dinh;Hiep, Nguyen Tien;Xuan, Le Thi;Hai, Nong Van;Cuong, Nguyen Manh;Bich, Truong Quang;Loc, Phan Ke;Vu, Bui Minh;Southavong, Boun Hoong
    • Natural Product Sciences
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.1-15
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    • 2002
  • An International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago initiated its activities in 1998, with the following specific objectives: (a) inventory and conservation of of plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and of medicinal plants of Laos; (b) drug discovery (and development) based on plants of Vietnam and Laos; and (c) economic development of communities participating in the ICBG project both in Vietnam and Laos. Member-institutions and an industrial partner of this ICBG are bound by a Memorandum of Agreement that recognizes property and intellectual property rights, prior informed consent for access to genetic resources and to indigenous knowledge, the sharing of benefits that may arise from the drug discovery effort, and the provision of short-term and long-term benefits to host country institutions and communities. The drug discovery effort is targeted to the search for agents for therapies against malaria (antimalarial assay of plant extracts, using Plasmodium falciparum clones), AIDS (anti-HIV-l activity using HOG.R5 reporter cell line (through transactivation of the green fluorescent protein/GFP gene), cancer (screening of plant extracts in 6 human tumor cell lines - KB, Col-2, LU-l, LNCaP, HUVEC, hTert-RPEl), tuberculosis (screening of extracts in the microplate Alamar Blue assay against Mycobacterium tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra\;and\;H_{37}Rv),$ all performed at UIC, and CNS-related diseases (with special focus on Alzheimer's disease, pain and rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma), peformed at Glaxo Smith Kline (UK). Source plants were selected based on two approaches: biodiversity-based (plants of Cuc Phuong National Park) and ethnobotany-based (medicinal plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and medicinal plants of Laos). At mc, as of July, 2001, active leads had been identified in the anti-HIV, anticancer, antimalarial, and anti- TB assay, after the screening of more than 800 extracts. At least 25 biologically active compounds have been isolated, 13 of which are new with anti-HIV activity, and 3 also new with antimalarial activity. At GSK of 21 plant samples with a history of use to treat CNS-related diseases tested to date, a number showed activity against one or more of the CNS assay targets used, but no new compounds have been isolated. The results of the drug discovery effort to date indicate that tropical plant diversity of Vietnam and Laos unquestionably harbors biologically active chemical entities, which, through further research, may eventually yield candidates for drug development. Although the substantial monetary benefit of the drug discovery process (royalties) is a long way off, the UIC ICBG program provides direct and real-term benefits to host country institutions and communities.

Genetic Expression of Color Approved by Color Qualities of Munsell System on the Cocoon of Silkworm, Bombyx mori (누에 고치색 유전자 발현의 다양성 검정 및 색채과학적 해석)

  • Han, Myung-Sae;Park, Hyun-Ro;Han, Sang-Mi;Nam, Ki-Soo;Kwon, Soon-Ha;Lim, Jong-Sung;Nguyen, Mau Tuan
    • Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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    • v.41 no.1
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    • pp.20-28
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    • 1999
  • Color qualities investigated on the basis of Munsell code and Korean standard color code for the cocoons from various strain of mulberry silkworm, Bombyx mori. 16 of different color qualities were identified from 21 of original silworm strains, and determinated international name with the revision of Korean color name for cocoon. The various cocoon color confirmed on the sphere from 567 to 593 nm wavelength, 78% of those located at the region about 580 nm (575~584) of sensitive "color difference limen". Y gene engaged broad ranges of wavelength (575~593 nm) in the color expression, by contrast with other genes of Pk (593 nm), F (584~593), Grc and relative G group (567~570 nm), on the transmission of carotenoid or flavonoid color substance. YC gene expression by original silk worm strain was also distinguished by those variation of specific yellow than other colors from Grc, GaGb, Gc, and YPkF. Appearance of chrome yellow cocoon was dominant than other yellow in the cross among vivid yellow group. F1 of pin${\times}$green produced the cocoon of yellow such as "additive mixture" as color light, however, most of the hybrid between yellow cocoon showed the color similar to "subtractive mixture" as a mixture of dyestuff. Hybrid cocoons among yellow or green colors were decreased their hue, value, and chroma, than those of parent. Diallel cross among the strain of various green cocoon suggest the existence of Grc, Ga, Gb, Gc genes. Cream colored cocoon of B. mandarina was differed from other yellow cocoon of Bobyx mori B. mori. Y$^A$ with Ymc showed the similar role of Y with C, therefore, segregated yellow cocoon from the B. mori${\times}$B. mandarina (+$^YC/Y^AYmc$). YC expression of $Y^AY$mc genes might be suppressed by deficiency of outer layer sericin on the middle division of silk giand in the B. mandarina.

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