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In Vitro Antioxidant Activity and Anticonvulsant Properties on Zebrafish PTZ-Induced Seizure Model of a Tilia viridis Aqueous Extract

  • Elina Malen Saint Martin;Ayelen Morena Sosa;Carolina Soledad Martinez;Jimena Prieto;Carla Marrassini;Cecilia Beatriz Dobrecky;Maria Rosario Alonso;Claudia Anesini
    • Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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    • v.27 no.3
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    • pp.211-222
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    • 2024
  • Objectives: Tilia viridis (Bayer) Simonk. (Malvaceae) is widely distributed in Argentina and employed for its tranquilizing properties. Other species of the genus (Tilia europaea L., Tilia cordata Mill., Tilia platyphyllos Scop.) have been traditionally used for the treatment of epilepsy. Epilepsy affects approximately 65 million people worldwide and is characterized by an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory processes in the brain, leading to unpredictable, unprovoked, recurrent seizures. Current pharmacological interventions often present mild to moderately severe side effects. Epilepsy has been associated with oxidative and nitrative stress as well as neuroinflammation. Herbal medicine therapies may offer new treatment options with multi-target antioxidant and anticonvulsant effects for patients whose seizures remain uncontrolled, potentially providing cost-effective solutions for individuals worldwide suffering from uncontrolled epilepsy.The aim of this study was to demonstrate the anticonvulsant activity of a standardized T. viridis aqueous extract (TE). Methods: Study of the constituents of TE, TE's antioxidant and anticonvulsant activities and toxicity, and analysis of the possible relation between the potential activities and the compounds present in the extract. In order to demonstrate TE's anticonvulsant activity a zebrafish model was used. The study also assessed TE's toxicity and antioxidant activity. To standardize the extract, total polyphenols and flavonoids were quantified and specific flavonoids were identified and quantified using HPLC-MS/MS and HPLC-UV. Results: TE exhibited anticonvulsant activity at low concentrations and demonstrated antioxidant effects by scavenging free radicals, exhibiting superoxide dismutase and peroxidase-like activities, as well as inhibiting lipoperoxidation. These actions can be attributed to the presence of polyphenols, particularly flavonoids. Conclusion: TE holds promise as a complementary herbal medicine in the treatment of epilepsy and may also offer benefits for other neuropathies associated with oxidative stress, such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Factors influencing college students' intention to continue their COVID-19 infection prevention behavior (대학생의 코로나19 감염예방행위 지속의도 영향요인)

  • So-Yun Park;Hyo-Suk Song;Sung-Hwan Bang;Chang-Hwa Han
    • Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.1042-1055
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    • 2024
  • The purpose of this study is to identify the factors influencing college students' intention to continue COVID-19 infection prevention behavior. The study subjects were collected from May 9 to June 17, 2022, from 209 students at D College, and the collected data were descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, and Multiple regression analysis. As a result of this study, COVID19 vaccination attitude was significantly positively correlated with COVID19-related anxiety, health beliefs, and intention to continue COVID19 prevention behavior, COVID19-related anxiety was significantly positively correlated with COVID19 stress, health beliefs, and COVID19 stress was significantly positively correlated with health beliefs, and health beliefs were significantly correlated with COVID19 prevention behavior intention. As a result of multiple regression analysis, the factors that significantly influence the intention to continue COVID19 infection prevention behavior were COVID19-related anxiety (𝛽=.35, p=<.001), health beliefs (𝛽=.17, p=.011), and COVID19 vaccination attitude (𝛽=.14, p=.035), followed by explanatory power of 25.2%. Therefore, it provided implications for the need for strategic development of countermeasures to prevent the spread of infection in the event of similar infectious diseases in the future by maintaining the continuity of infection prevention actions.

A Study for Strategy of On-line Shopping Mall: Based on Customer Purchasing and Re-purchasing Pattern (시스템 다이내믹스 기법을 활용한 온라인 쇼핑몰의 전략에 관한 연구 : 소비자의 구매 및 재구매 행동을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Sang-Gun;Min, Suk-Ki;Kang, Min-Cheol
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.91-121
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    • 2008
  • Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, has become a major business trend in these days. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily by developing the Internet technology. Most electronic commerce has being conducted between businesses to customers; therefore, the researches with respect to e-commerce are to find customer's needs, behaviors through statistical methods. However, the statistical researches, mostly based on a questionnaire, are the static researches, They can tell us the dynamic relationships between initial purchasing and repurchasing. Therefore, this study proposes dynamic research model for analyzing the cause of initial purchasing and repurchasing. This paper is based on the System-Dynamic theory, using the powerful simulation model with some restriction, The restrictions are based on the theory TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), PAM, and TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior). This article investigates not only the customer's purchasing and repurchasing behavior by passing of time but also the interactive effects to one another. This research model has six scenarios and three steps for analyzing customer behaviors. The first step is the research of purchasing situations. The second step is the research of repurchasing situations. Finally, the third step is to study the relationship between initial purchasing and repurchasing. The purpose of six scenarios is to find the customer's purchasing patterns according to the environmental changes. We set six variables in these scenarios by (1) changing the number of products; (2) changing the number of contents in on-line shopping malls; (3) having multimedia files or not in the shopping mall web sites; (4) grading on-line communities; (5) changing the qualities of products; (6) changing the customer's degree of confidence on products. First three variables are applied to study customer's purchasing behavior, and the other variables are applied to repurchasing behavior study. Through the simulation study, this paper presents some inter-relational result about customer purchasing behaviors, For example, Active community actions are not the increasing factor of purchasing but the increasing factor of word of mouth effect, Additionally. The higher products' quality, the more word of mouth effects increase. The number of products and contents on the web sites have same influence on people's buying behaviors. All simulation methods in this paper is not only display the result of each scenario but also find how to affect each other. Hence, electronic commerce firm can make more realistic marketing strategy about consumer behavior through this dynamic simulation research. Moreover, dynamic analysis method can predict the results which help the decision of marketing strategy by using the time-line graph. Consequently, this dynamic simulation analysis could be a useful research model to make firm's competitive advantage. However, this simulation model needs more further study. With respect to reality, this simulation model has some limitations. There are some missing factors which affect customer's buying behaviors in this model. The first missing factor is the customer's degree of recognition of brands. The second factor is the degree of customer satisfaction. The third factor is the power of word of mouth in the specific region. Generally, word of mouth affects significantly on a region's culture, even people's buying behaviors. The last missing factor is the user interface environment in the internet or other on-line shopping tools. In order to get more realistic result, these factors might be essential matters to make better research in the future studies.

A Study on the Historical Development of Research Community in Korea: Focused on the Government Supported Institutes (연구자 집단의 성장과 변천: 정부 출연 연구 기관을 중심으로)

  • Park Jin-Hee
    • Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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    • v.6 no.1 s.11
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    • pp.119-152
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    • 2006
  • This paper deals with the historical development of research community in Korea. As the former studies of the korean scientific community show, the government supported institutes played an important role in the formation of research community. Therefore the theme of this study is concerned with the historical development of the government supported institutes and the features of their researcher group. In this paper following questions will be answered: How the social status of these researcher group is changed, what kind of response on social problems or national politics they had, and which characteristic they showed with regards to the identity problem. After the korean liberation the government institutes, such as the Chungang Kongop Yonguso(industrial research center)and the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, contributed to the development of the first generation of research group. However this research group could hardly identify themselves as researcher, because they spent much time on testing, evaluation or education. The identity problem is also resulted from the deficiency of authority as research institute. The status of researcher had no difference from that of civil servant. With the establishment of KIST the korean research community came into blossom. The government supported institutes, which were founded after the model of KIST, allowed quantitative and qualitative growth of research community. Thanks to the guarantee of institutional authority and the new reward system, the researcher could get respect and improve its social status. During this period the researcher volunteered to help the government policies. We can find often the nationalistic statements in the research community. During 1990s the research group demonstrated different behaviors and attitude toward the government. The nationalistic ideology disappeared. Instead of that, the research group criticized the government policies and took actions against the government. Those changes are related with the lowered position of government supported institutes.

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Effects of Compositions of Saponin Fraction from Korean Red Ginseng in the Relaxation of Rabbit and Rat Corpus Cavernosum (토끼와 흰쥐 음경해면체 이완작용에 미치는 홍삼사포닌 분획별 효과)

  • Choi Young Deuk;Park Jin Ah;Choi Hyung Ki;Nam Ki Yeul
    • Journal of Ginseng Research
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    • v.23 no.1 s.53
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    • pp.13-20
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    • 1999
  • We previously reported that Korean red ginseng (KRG) has a relaxation effect on the smooth muscles of corpus cavernosum via nitric oxide (NO) pathway and calcium and potassium channels. However, it is suggested that the active ingredients of KRG might be different depending on the sources of preparation, and there might be differences in actions for different compositions. We first investigated the composition of KRG saponins according to the extractions of the various sources of KRG, then with these extractions the relaxation effects were evaluated in vitro and hemodynamical in vivo using New Zealand white rabbit and rat corpus cavernosum. The total compositions of ginsenoside $(G-Rb_1,\;-Rb_2,\;-Rc,\;-Rd,\;G-Re,\;-Rf,\;-Rg_1)$ in fractionated KRG saponin designated as TS-1, TS-2, TS-3 were $41\%,\;40\%,\;and\;62\%,$ respectively, and the ratios of PD saponin and PT saponin (PD/PT) were 1,55, 1.72, 2.25, and 2.61, the values of which were statistically significant. In vitro studies using the rabbit corpus cavernosal muscle strips, the KRG saponin relaxed cavernosal strips in a dose-dependent manner, and same results were observed in in vivo studies, that KRG saponin increased the intracavernosal pressure in the rat. There was difference in the efficacy according to fractionation techniques. The differences in the total contents of ginsenosides did not affect relaxation, rather PT saponin content was statistically related to the degree of cavernosal relaxation, and this action presumed to be mediated by NO pathway and calcium and potassium channels. In conclusion, KRG exerts relaxation which is a key step in erection via combination of effects on NO system or calcium and potassium channels. The efficacy of this action is different to the sources of ginseng, which is affected by the different composition of ginsenosides $(G-Rb_1,\;-Rb_2,\;-Rc,\;-Rd,\;G-Re,\;-Rf,\;-Rg_1).$ Thus the further studies on the active ingredients such as minor ginsenosides and non-saponin components of red ginseng with maximum potency should be sought.

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A prognosis discovering lethal-related genes in plants for target identification and inhibitor design (식물 치사관련 유전자를 이용하는 신규 제초제 작용점 탐색 및 조절물질 개발동향)

  • Hwang, I.T.;Lee, D.H.;Choi, J.S.;Kim, T.J.;Kim, B.T.;Park, Y.S.;Cho, K.Y.
    • The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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    • v.5 no.3
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    • pp.1-11
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    • 2001
  • New technologies will have a large impact on the discovery of new herbicide site of action. Genomics, combinatorial chemistry, and bioinformatics help take advantage of serendipity through tile sequencing of huge numbers of genes or the synthesis of large numbers of chemical compounds. There are approximately $10^{30}\;to\;10^{50}$ possible molecules in molecular space of which only a fraction have been synthesized. Combining this potential with having access to 50,000 plant genes in the future elevates tile probability of discovering flew herbicidal site of actions. If 0.1, 1.0 or 10% of total genes in a typical plant are valid for herbicide target, a plant with 50,000 genes would provide about 50, 500, and 5,000 targets, respectively. However, only 11 herbicide targets have been identified and commercialized. The successful design of novel herbicides depends on careful consideration of a number of factors including target enzyme selections and validations, inhibitor designs, and the metabolic fates. Biochemical information can be used to identify enzymes which produce lethal phenotypes. The identification of a lethal target site is an important step to this approach. An examination of the characteristics of known targets provides of crucial insight as to the definition of a lethal target. Recently, antisense RNA suppression of an enzyme translation has been used to determine the genes required for toxicity and offers a strategy for identifying lethal target sites. After the identification of a lethal target, detailed knowledge such as the enzyme kinetics and the protein structure may be used to design potent inhibitors. Various types of inhibitors may be designed for a given enzyme. Strategies for the selection of new enzyme targets giving the desired physiological response upon partial inhibition include identification of chemical leads, lethal mutants and the use of antisense technology. Enzyme inhibitors having agrochemical utility can be categorized into six major groups: ground-state analogues, group specific reagents, affinity labels, suicide substrates, reaction intermediate analogues, and extraneous site inhibitors. In this review, examples of each category, and their advantages and disadvantages, will be discussed. The target identification and construction of a potent inhibitor, in itself, may not lead to develop an effective herbicide. The desired in vivo activity, uptake and translocation, and metabolism of the inhibitor should be studied in detail to assess the full potential of the target. Strategies for delivery of the compound to the target enzyme and avoidance of premature detoxification may include a proherbicidal approach, especially when inhibitors are highly charged or when selective detoxification or activation can be exploited. Utilization of differences in detoxification or activation between weeds and crops may lead to enhance selectivity. Without a full appreciation of each of these facets of herbicide design, the chances for success with the target or enzyme-driven approach are reduced.

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A Study on Global Initiatives on Greenhouse Gas Reduction in the International Aviation (항공분야 기후변화 대응 현황 - 최근 ICAO 고위급회의 논의를 중심으로 -)

  • Maeng, Sung-Gyu;Hwang, Ho-Won
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.47-67
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    • 2009
  • In recent years, greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction has become high priority issue in international aviation. GHG emissions from the aviation sector only accounts for approximately 2 percent of total GHG emissions in the world. However, as with GHG gases in other sectors, it has been pointed out as a contributing factor to global warming and there is an ongoing conversation in the aviation community to establish international framework for emissions reductions. In the case of international aviation, effects of aviation activities of a State go beyond the airports and airspace of that State. This makes compiling of GHG emissions data very difficult. There are also other legal and technical issues, namely the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR)” under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and “Fair Opportunity” principle of the Chicago Convention. For all these reason, it is expected that it will not be an easy job to establish an internationally agreed mechanism for reducing emissions in spite of continuing collaboration among States. UN adopted the UNFCCC in 1990 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to impose common but differentiated responsibility on emissions reductions. In international aviation, ICAO has been taking the lead in measures for the aviation sector. In this role, ICAO held the High-level Meeting on International Aviation and Climate Change on 7 to 9 October 2009 at its Headquarters in Montreal and endorsed recommendations on reducing GHG from international aviation which will also be reported to the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15). Key items include basic principle in global aviation emissions reduction: aspirational goals and implementation options: strategies and measures to achieve goals: means to measure and monitor the implementation; and financial and human resources. It is very likely that the Republic of Korea will be included among the Parties subject to mandatory limitation or reduction of GHG emissions after 2013. Therefore, it is necessary for Korea to thoroughly analyze ICAO measures to develop comprehensive measures for reducing aviation emissions and to take proactive actions to prepare for future discussions on critical issues after COP15.

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Biostatic activity of Coix lacryma seed extract on Toxoplasma gondii in macrophages (율무씨 수침 추출물이 대식세포내 톡소포자충에 미치는 영향에 관한 실험적 연구)

  • 소진탁;김숙향
    • Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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    • v.34 no.3
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    • pp.197-206
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    • 1996
  • Water extract of Coix locrvmn seeds (Co-Ex) was separated into several components; dissolved with Tris-Cl buffer and the supernatant (WC 1), ammonium sulfate treatment supernatant (WC2) and the pellet nvc31,9AE column chromatography of WC 1 and the peak portions; WC4, WCS and WC6. Murine peritoneal macrophages in DMEM containing 10% heat-inactivated FCS were infected with tachyzoites of ToxopIQsmc gondii, RH strain, in uifo. By adding modulators such as Co-Ex, WC 1,2,3,4.5,6 and LPS or IFN-γ for 24 hrs . toxoplasmastatic activity of macrophages was examined in relation to nitrite production. Nitrite production of macrophages was enhanced especially in the series of WC2, WC1 and the combination sample (WC1 + WC2 + WC3) by order than other components or fractions (WC4, WC5, WC6) tested . Toxoplasmastatic actions such as percentage of the inacrophages infected by T. gonnii and fold increase of T gondii in macrophages showed retroverse relations with the amount of nitrite production; i.e. as nitric oxide (NO) increased the phagocytic index of macrophages and the fold increase of tachyzoites in macrophages decreased . Nitrite (NO-2) production was increased by adding IFN-γ in all cases together with enhancement of biostatic effects. Through the results obtained, it is speculated that some components other than the non-proteinous and defatted components in Coix lacrwmn seeds may contribute to activate macrophages through induction of NO for the biostatic activity.

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The Role of Social Capital and Identity in Knowledge Contribution in Virtual Communities: An Empirical Investigation (가상 커뮤니티에서 사회적 자본과 정체성이 지식기여에 미치는 역할: 실증적 분석)

  • Shin, Ho Kyoung;Kim, Kyung Kyu;Lee, Un-Kon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.53-74
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    • 2012
  • A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

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Multi-day Trip Planning System with Collaborative Recommendation (협업적 추천 기반의 여행 계획 시스템)

  • Aprilia, Priska;Oh, Kyeong-Jin;Hong, Myung-Duk;Ga, Myeong-Hyeon;Jo, Geun-Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.159-185
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    • 2016
  • Planning a multi-day trip is a complex, yet time-consuming task. It usually starts with selecting a list of points of interest (POIs) worth visiting and then arranging them into an itinerary, taking into consideration various constraints and preferences. When choosing POIs to visit, one might ask friends to suggest them, search for information on the Web, or seek advice from travel agents; however, those options have their limitations. First, the knowledge of friends is limited to the places they have visited. Second, the tourism information on the internet may be vast, but at the same time, might cause one to invest a lot of time reading and filtering the information. Lastly, travel agents might be biased towards providers of certain travel products when suggesting itineraries. In recent years, many researchers have tried to deal with the huge amount of tourism information available on the internet. They explored the wisdom of the crowd through overwhelming images shared by people on social media sites. Furthermore, trip planning problems are usually formulated as 'Tourist Trip Design Problems', and are solved using various search algorithms with heuristics. Various recommendation systems with various techniques have been set up to cope with the overwhelming tourism information available on the internet. Prediction models of recommendation systems are typically built using a large dataset. However, sometimes such a dataset is not always available. For other models, especially those that require input from people, human computation has emerged as a powerful and inexpensive approach. This study proposes CYTRIP (Crowdsource Your TRIP), a multi-day trip itinerary planning system that draws on the collective intelligence of contributors in recommending POIs. In order to enable the crowd to collaboratively recommend POIs to users, CYTRIP provides a shared workspace. In the shared workspace, the crowd can recommend as many POIs to as many requesters as they can, and they can also vote on the POIs recommended by other people when they find them interesting. In CYTRIP, anyone can make a contribution by recommending POIs to requesters based on requesters' specified preferences. CYTRIP takes input on the recommended POIs to build a multi-day trip itinerary taking into account the user's preferences, the various time constraints, and the locations. The input then becomes a multi-day trip planning problem that is formulated in Planning Domain Definition Language 3 (PDDL3). A sequence of actions formulated in a domain file is used to achieve the goals in the planning problem, which are the recommended POIs to be visited. The multi-day trip planning problem is a highly constrained problem. Sometimes, it is not feasible to visit all the recommended POIs with the limited resources available, such as the time the user can spend. In order to cope with an unachievable goal that can result in no solution for the other goals, CYTRIP selects a set of feasible POIs prior to the planning process. The planning problem is created for the selected POIs and fed into the planner. The solution returned by the planner is then parsed into a multi-day trip itinerary and displayed to the user on a map. The proposed system is implemented as a web-based application built using PHP on a CodeIgniter Web Framework. In order to evaluate the proposed system, an online experiment was conducted. From the online experiment, results show that with the help of the contributors, CYTRIP can plan and generate a multi-day trip itinerary that is tailored to the users' preferences and bound by their constraints, such as location or time constraints. The contributors also find that CYTRIP is a useful tool for collecting POIs from the crowd and planning a multi-day trip.