• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.20 no.1 s.21
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• pp.165-203
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• 1987

This project was a service-cum-research effort with a quasi-experimental study design to examine the health benefits of an integrated Family Planning (FP)/Maternal & Child health (MCH) Service approach that provides crucial factors missing in the present on-going programs. The specific objectives were: 1) To test the effectiveness of trained nurse/midwives (MW) assigned as change agents in the Health Sub-Center (HSC) to bring about the changes in the eight FP/MCH indicators, namely; (i)FP/MCH contacts between field workers and their clients (ii) the use of effective FP methods, (iii) the inter-birth interval and/or open interval, (iv) prenatal care by medically qualified personnel, (v) medically supervised deliveries, (vi) the rate of induced abortion, (vii) maternal and infant morbidity, and (viii) preinatal & infant mortality. 2) To measure the integrative linkage (contacts) between MW & HSC workers and between HSC and clients. 3) To examine the organizational or administrative factors influencing integrative linkage between health workers. Study design; The above objectives called for quasi-experimental design setting up a study and control area with and without a midwife. An active intervention program (FP/MCH minimum 'package' program) was conducted for a 2 year period from June 1982-July 1984 in Seosan County and 'before and after' surveys were conducted to measure the change. Service input; This study was undertaken by the Soonchunhyang University in collaboration with WHO. After a baseline survery in 1981, trained nurses/midwives were introduced into two health sub-centers in a rural setting (Seosan county) for a 2 year period from 1982 to 1984. A major service input was the establishment of midwifery services in the existing health delivery system with emphasis on nurse/midwife's role as the link between health workers (nurse aids) and village health workers, and the referral of risk patients to the private physician (OBGY specialist). An evaluation survey was made in August 1984 to assess the effectiveness of this alternative integrated approach in the study areas in comparison with the control area which had normal government services. Method of evaluation; a. In this study, the primary objective was first to examine to what extent the FP/MCH package program brought about changes in the pre-determined eight indicators (outcome and impact measures) and the following relationship was first analyzed; b. Nevertheless, this project did not automatically accept the assumption that if two or more activities were integrated, the results would automatically be better than a non-integrated or categorical program. There is a need to assess the 'integration process' itself within the package program. The process of integration was measured in terms of interactive linkages, or the quantity & quality of contacts between workers & clients and among workers. Intergrative linkages were hypothesized to be influenced by organizational factors at the HSC clinic level including HSC goals, sltrurture, authority, leadership style, resources, and personal characteristics of HSC staff. The extent or degree of integration, as measured by the intensity of integrative linkages, was in turn presumed to influence programme performance. Thus as indicated diagrammatically below, organizational factors constituted the independent variables, integration as the intervening variable and programme performance with respect to family planning and health services as the dependent variable: Concerning organizational factors, however, due to the limited number of HSCs (2 in the study area and 3 in the control area), they were studied by participatory observation of an anthropologist who was independent of the project. In this observation, we examined whether the assumed integration process actually occurred or not. If not, what were the constraints in producing an effective integration process. Summary of Findings; A) Program effects and impact 1. Effects on FP use: During this 2 year action period, FP acceptance increased from 58% in 1981 to 78% in 1984 in both the study and control areas. This increase in both areas was mainly due to the new family planning campaign driven by the Government for the same study period. Therefore, there was no increment of FP acceptance rate due to additional input of MW to the on-going FP program. But in the study area, quality aspects of FP were somewhat improved, having a better continuation rate of IUDs & pills and more use of effective Contraceptive methods in comparison with the control area. 2. Effects of use of MCH services: Between the study and control areas, however, there was a significant difference in maternal and child health care. For example, the coverage of prenatal care was increased from 53% for 1981 birth cohort to 75% for 1984 birth cohort in the study area. In the control area, the same increased from 41% (1981) to 65% (1984). It is noteworthy that almost two thirds of the recent birth cohort received prenatal care even in the control area, indicating that there is a growing demand of MCH care as the size of family norm becomes smaller 3. There has been a substantive increase in delivery care by medical professions in the study area, with an annual increase rate of 10% due to midwives input in the study areas. The project had about two times greater effect on postnatal care (68% vs. 33%) at delivery care(45.2% vs. 26.1%). 4. The study area had better reproductive efficiency (wanted pregancies with FP practice & healthy live births survived by one year old) than the control area, especially among women under 30 (14.1% vs. 9.6%). The proportion of women who preferred the 1st trimester for their first prenatal care rose significantly in the study area as compared to the control area (24% vs 13%). B) Effects on Interactive Linkage 1. This project made a contribution in making several useful steps in the direction of service integration, namely; i) The health workers have become familiar with procedures on how to work together with each other (especially with a midwife) in carrying out their work in FP/MCH and, ii) The health workers have gotten a feeling of the usefulness of family health records (statistical integration) in identifying targets in their own work and their usefulness in caring for family health. 2. On the other hand, because of a lack of required organizational factors, complete linkage was not obtained as the project intended. i) In regards to the government health worker's activities in terms of home visiting there was not much difference between the study & control areas though the MW did more home visiting than Government health workers. ii) In assessing the service performance of MW & health workers, the midwives balanced their workload between 40% FP, 40% MCH & 20% other activities (mainly immunization). However, $85{\sim}90%$ of the services provided by the health workers were other than FP/MCH, mainly for immunizations such as the encephalitis campaign. In the control area, a similar pattern was observed. Over 75% of their service was other than FP/MCH. Therefore, the pattern shows the health workers are a long way from becoming multipurpose workers even though the government is pushing in this direction. 3. Villagers were much more likely to visit the health sub-center clinic in the study area than in the control area (58% vs.31%) and for more combined care (45% vs.23%). C) Organization factors (admistrative integrative issues) 1. When MW (new workers with higher qualification) were introduced to HSC, it was noted that there were conflicts between the existing HSC workers (Nurse aids with less qualification than MW) and the MW for the beginning period of the project. The cause of the conflict was studied by an anthropologist and it was pointed out that these functional integration problems stemmed from the structural inadequacies of the health subcenter organization as indicated below; i) There is still no general consensus about the objectives and goals of the project between the project staff and the existing health workers. ii) There is no formal linkage between the responsibility of each member's job in the health sub-center. iii) There is still little chance for midwives to play a catalytic role or to establish communicative networks between workers in order to link various knowledge and skills to provide better FP/MCH services in the health sub-center. 2. Based on the above findings the project recommended to the County Chief (who has power to control the administrative staff and the technical staff in his county) the following ; i) In order to solve the conflicts between the individual roles and functions in performing health care activities, there must be goals agreed upon by both. ii) The health sub·center must function as an autonomous organization to undertake the integration health project. In order to do that, it is necessary to support administrative considerations, and to establish a communication system for supervision and to control of the health sub-centers. iii) The administrative organization, tentatively, must be organized to bind the health worker's midwive's and director's jobs by an organic relationship in order to achieve the integrative system under the leadership of health sub-center director. After submitting this observation report, there has been better understanding from frequent meetings & communication between HW/MW in FP/MCH work as the program developed. Lessons learned from the Seosan Project (on issues of FP/MCH integration in Korea); 1) A majority or about 80% of the couples are now practicing FP. As indicated by the study, there is a growing demand from clients for the health system to provide more MCH services than FP in order to maintain the achieved small size of family through FP practice. It is fortunate to see that the government is now formulating a MCH policy for the year 2,000 and revising MCH laws and regulations to emphasize more MCH care for achieving a small size family through family planning practice. 2) Goal consensus in FP/MCH shouBd be made among the health workers It administrators, especially to emphasize the need of care of 'wanted' child. But there is a long way to go to realize the 'real' integration of FP into MCH in Korea, unless there is a structural integration FP/MCH because a categorical FP is still first priority to reduce the rate of population growth for economic reasons but not yet for health/welfare reasons in practice. 3) There should be more financial allocation: (i) a midwife should be made available to help to promote the MCH program and coordinate services, (in) there should be a health sub·center director who can provide leadership training for managing the integrated program. There is a need for 'organizational support', if the decision of integration is made to obtain benefit from both FP & MCH. In other words, costs should be paid equally to both FP/MCH. The integration slogan itself, without the commitment of paying such costs, is powerless to advocate it. 4) Need of management training for middle level health personnel is more acute as the Government has already constructed 90 MCH centers attached to the County Health Center but without adequate manpower, facilities, and guidelines for integrating the work of both FP and MCH. 5) The local government still considers these MCH centers only as delivery centers to take care only of those visiting maternity cases. The MCH center should be a center for the managment of all pregnancies occurring in the community and the promotion of FP with a systematic and effective linkage of resources available in the county such as i.e. Village Health Worker, Community Health Practitioner, Health Sub-center Physicians & Health workers, Doctors and Midwives in MCH center, OBGY Specialists in clinics & hospitals as practiced by the Seosan project at primary health care level.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2004

Purpose: A new classification of gastrointestinal food allergy was published, but the changes of terminology between previously reported terms and the new ones were in a state of disorder. This has resulted in confusion between medical communication and diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. The clinical observations of infants presenting with gastrointestinal cow milk allergy (GI-CMA) were performed, and the changes in the terminology reviewed through the published Korean literature. Methods: Between March 2003 and July 2003, data from 37 consecutive infants with GI-CMA, aged 2 weeks to 15 months, were reviewed. The challenge and elimination test of cow milk, and the endoscopic and histologic findings, were used for the seven subdivisions of GI-CMA according to a new classification on the basis of patients' ages, clinical manifestations and location of gastrointestinal lesions. Results: The 37 patients had a mean age of $5.4{\pm}4.8$ months, with those observed in 26 (70.3%) of patients being below 6 months of age. The seven final diagnoses were; cow milk protein-induced enterocolitis (CMPIE) in 12 (32.4%), cow milk protein proctitis (PROC) in 12 (32.4%), IgE-mediated (IGE) in 6 (16.2%), gastroesophageal reflux-associated cow milk allergy (GERA) in 5 (13.5%) and eosinophilic gastroenterocolitis in 2 (5.4%). CMPIE was revealed as the typical type in 7 (18.9%) and the atypical type in 5 (13.5%), and all of typical CMPIE revealed cow milk protein-induced enteropathy. The mean age at symptom onset was $4.3{\pm}0.8$ months, and for those with typical and atypical CMPIE, and PROC and GERA were $3.8{\pm}4.6$, $10.4{\pm}3.8$, $3.4{\pm}3.9$ and $7.8{\pm}5.7$ months, respectively (p<0.05). The period from onset of symptom to diagnosis was $2.4{\pm}3.3$ (0.5~12) months, with those observed in atypical CMPIE and GERA being over 3months. Although the birth weights in all patients were within the 10~90 percentile range, the body weights on diagnoses were below the 3 percentile in 48.6%; IGE 16.7%, EOS 0%, typical CMPIE 85.7%, atypical CMPIE 60.0%, PROC 25.0% and GERA 100% (p<0.05). Through the review of the Korean literature, 8 case reports and 14 original articles for GI-CMA were found. Conclusion: GI-CMA is not a rare clinical disorder and is subdivided into seven categories on the basis of the patient's age, clinical manifestations and location of the gastrointestinal lesions. The terms for GI-CMA are changing with new classifications, and careful approaches are necessary for medical communications.

• Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.69-94
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• 2001

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current status of the records management science education in Japan, and to examine the implications of the rapid growth of this filed while noting some of its significant issues and problems. The goal of records management science education is to improve the quality of information services and to assure an adequate supply of information professionals. Because records management science programs prepare students for a professional career, their curricula must encompass elements of both education and practical training. This is often expressed as a contrast between theory and practice. The confluence of the social, economic and technological realities of the environment where the learning takes place affects both. This paper reviews the historical background and current trends of records management science education in Japan. It also analyzes the various types of curriculum and the teaching staff of these institutions, with focus on the status of the undergraduate program at Surugadai University, the first comprehensive, university level program in Japan. The Faculty of Cultural Information Resources, Surugadai University, a new school toward an integrated information disciplines, was opened in 1994, to explore the theory and practice of the management diverse cultural information resources. Its purpose was to stimulate and promote research in additional fields of information science by offering professional training in archival science, records management, and museum curatorship, as well as librarianship. In 1999, the school introduced a master program, the first in Japan. The Faculty has two departments and each of them has two courses; Department of Sensory Information Resources Management; -Sound and Audiovisual Information Management, -Landscape and Tourism Information Management, Department of Knowledge Information Resources Management; -Library and Information Management, -Records and Archives Management The structure of the entire curriculum is also organized in stages from the time of entrance through basic instruction and onwards. Orientation subjects which a student takes immediately upon entering university is an introduction to specialized education, in which he learns the basic methods of university education and study, During his first and second years, he arranges Basic and Core courses as essential steps towards specialization at university. For this purpose, the courses offer a wide variety of study topics. The number of courses offered, including these, amounts to approximately 150. While from his third year onwards, he begins specific courses that apply to his major field, and in a gradual accumulation of seminar classes and practical training, puts his knowledge grained to practical use. Courses pertaining to these departments are offered to students beginning their second year. However, there is no impenetrable wall between the two departments, and there are only minor differences with regard requirements for graduation. Students may select third or fourth year seminars regardless of the department to which they belong. To be awarded a B.A. in Cultural Information Resources, the student is required to earn 34 credits in Basic Courses(such as, Social History of Cultural Information, Cultural Anthropology, History of Science, Behavioral Sciences, Communication, etc.), 16 credits in Foreign Languages(including 10 in English), 14 credits on Information Processing(including both theory and practice), and 60 credits in the courses for his or her major. Finally, several of the issues and problems currently facing records management science education in Japan are briefly summarized below; -Integration and Incorporation of related areas and similar programs, -Curriculum Improvement, -Insufficient of Textbooks, -Lack of qualified Teachers, -Problems of the employment of Graduates. As we moved toward more sophisticated, integrated, multimedia information services, information professionals will need to work more closely with colleagues in other specialties. It will become essential to the survival of the information professions for librarians to work with archivists, record managers and museum curators. Managing the changes in our increasingly information-intensive society demands strong coalitions among everyone in cultural Institutions. To provide our future colleagues with these competencies will require building and strengthening partnerships within and across the information professions and across national borders.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.97-103
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• 2010

Purpose: Treating same region with different modalities there is a limit to evaluate the total absorbed dose of normal tissues. The reason is that it does not support to communication each modalities yet. In this article, it evaluates absorbed dose of the patients who had been treated same region by a tomotherapy and a linear accelerator. Materials and Methods: After reconstructing anatomic structure with a anthropomorphic phantom, administrate 45 Gy to a tumor in linac plan system as well as prescribe 15 Gy in tomotherapy plan system for make an ideal treatment plan. After the plan which made by tomoplan system transfers to the oncentra plan system for reproduce plan under the same condition and realize total treatment plan with summation 45 Gy linac treatment plan. To evaluate the absorbed dose of two different modalities, do a comparative study both a simple summation dose values and integration dose values. Then compare and analyze absorbed dose of normal tissues and a tumor with the patients who had been exposured radiation by above two differents modalities. Results: The result of compared data, in case of minimum dose, there are big different dose values in spleen (12.4%). On the other hand, in case of the maximum dose, it reports big different in a small bowel (10.2%) and a cord (5.8%) in head & neck cancer patients, there presents that oral (20.3%), right lens (7.7%) in minimum dose value. About maximum dose, it represents that spinal (22.5), brain stem (12%), optic chiasm (8.9%), Rt lens (11.5%), mandible (8.1%), pituitary gland (6.2%). In case of Rt abdominal cancer patients, there represents big different minimum dose as Lt kidney (20.3%), stomach (8.1%) about pelvic cancer patients, it reports there are big different in minimum dose as a bladder (15.2%) as well as big different value in maximum dose as a small bowel (5.6%), a bladder (5.5%) in addition, making treatment plan it is able us to get. Conclusion: In case of comparing both simple summation absorbed dose and integration absorbed dose, the minimum dose are represented higher as well as the maximum dose come out lower and the average dose are revealed similar with our expected values data. It is able to evaluate tumor & normal tissue absorbed dose which could had been not realized by treatment plan system. The DVH of interesting region are prescribed lower dose than expected. From now on, it needs to develop the new modality which are able to realize exact dose distribution as well as integration absorbed dose evaluation in same treatment region with different modalities.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 2005

Purpose: Uterine cervix cancer is one of the most prevalent women cancer in Korea. We analysed published papers in Korea with comparing Patterns of Care Study (PCS) articles of United States and Japan for the purpose of developing and processing Korean PCS. Materials and Methods: We searched PCS related foreign-produced papers in the PCS homepage (212 articles and abstracts) and from the Pub Med to find Structure and Process of the PCS. To compare their study with Korean papers, we used the internet site 'Korean Pub Med' to search 99 articles regarding uterine cervix cancer and radiation therapy. We analysed Korean paper by comparing them with selected PCS papers regarding Structure, Process and Outcome and compared their items between the period of before 1980's and 1990's. Results: Evaluable papers were 28 from United States, 10 from the Japan and 73 from the Korea which treated cervix PCS items. PCS papers for United States and Japan commonly stratified into $3\~4$ categories on the bases of the scales characteristics of the facilities, numbers of the patients, doctors, Researchers restricted eligible patients strictly. For the process of the study, they analysed factors regarding pretreatment staging in chronological order, treatment related factors, factors in addition to FIGO staging and treatment machine. Papers in United States dealt with racial characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics of the patients, tumor size (6), and bilaterality of parametrial or pelvic side wail invasion (5), whereas papers from Japan treated of the tumor markers. The common trend in the process of staging work-up was decreased use of lymphangiogram, barium enema and increased use of CT and MRI over the times. The recent subject from the Korean papers dealt with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (9 papers), treatment duration (4), tumor markers (B) and unconventional fractionation. Conclusion: By comparing papers among 3 nations, we collected items for Korean uterine cervix cancer PCS. By consensus meeting and close communication, survey items for cervix cancer PCS were developed to measure structure, process and outcome of the radiation treatment of the cervix cancer. Subsequent future research will focus on the use of brachytherapy and its impact on outcome including complications. These finding and future PCS studies will direct the development of educational programs aimed at correcting identified deficits in care.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.171-196
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• 2018

With the development of the web, two-way communication and evaluation became possible and marketing paradigms shifted. In order to meet the needs of consumers, web design trends are continuously responding to consumer feedback. As the web becomes more and more important, both academics and businesses are studying consumer emotions and satisfaction on the web. However, some consumer characteristics are not well considered. Demographic characteristics such as age and sex have been studied extensively, but few studies consider psychological characteristics such as regulatory focus (i.e., emotional regulation). In this study, we analyze the effect of web style on consumer emotion. Many studies analyze the relationship between the web and regulatory focus, but most concentrate on the purpose of web use, particularly motivation and information search, rather than on web style and design. The web communicates with users through visual elements. Because the human brain is influenced by all five senses, both design factors and emotional responses are important in the web environment. Therefore, in this study, we examine the relationship between consumer emotion and satisfaction and web style and design. Previous studies have considered the effects of web layout, structure, and color on emotions. In this study, however, we excluded these web components, in contrast to earlier studies, and analyzed the relationship between consumer satisfaction and emotional indexes of web-style only. To perform this analysis, we collected consumer surveys presenting 40 web style themes to 204 consumers. Each consumer evaluated four themes. The emotional adjectives evaluated by consumers were composed of 18 contrast pairs, and the upper emotional indexes were extracted through factor analysis. The emotional indexes were 'softness,' 'modernity,' 'clearness,' and 'jam.' Hypotheses were established based on the assumption that emotional indexes have different effects on consumer satisfaction. After the analysis, hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were accepted and hypothesis 4 was rejected. While hypothesis 4 was rejected, its effect on consumer satisfaction was negative, not positive. This means that emotional indexes such as 'softness,' 'modernity,' and 'clearness' have a positive effect on consumer satisfaction. In other words, consumers prefer emotions that are soft, emotional, natural, rounded, dynamic, modern, elaborate, unique, bright, pure, and clear. 'Jam' has a negative effect on consumer satisfaction. It means, consumer prefer the emotion which is empty, plain, and simple. Regulatory focus shows differences in motivation and propensity in various domains. It is important to consider organizational behavior and decision making according to the regulatory focus tendency, and it affects not only political, cultural, ethical judgments and behavior but also broad psychological problems. Regulatory focus also differs from emotional response. Promotion focus responds more strongly to positive emotional responses. On the other hand, prevention focus has a strong response to negative emotions. Web style is a type of service, and consumer satisfaction is affected not only by cognitive evaluation but also by emotion. This emotional response depends on whether the consumer will benefit or harm himself. Therefore, it is necessary to confirm the difference of the consumer's emotional response according to the regulatory focus which is one of the characteristics and viewpoint of the consumers about the web style. After MMR analysis result, hypothesis 5.3 was accepted, and hypothesis 5.4 was rejected. But hypothesis 5.4 supported in the opposite direction to the hypothesis. After validation, we confirmed the mechanism of emotional response according to the tendency of regulatory focus. Using the results, we developed the structure of web-style recommendation system and recommend methods through regulatory focus. We classified the regulatory focus group in to three categories that promotion, grey, prevention. Then, we suggest web-style recommend method along the group. If we further develop this study, we expect that the existing regulatory focus theory can be extended not only to the motivational part but also to the emotional behavioral response according to the regulatory focus tendency. Moreover, we believe that it is possible to recommend web-style according to regulatory focus and emotional desire which consumers most prefer.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-20
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• 2013

Nowadays, social network is a huge communication platform for providing people to connect with one another and to bring users together to share common interests, experiences, and their daily activities. Users spend hours per day in maintaining personal information and interacting with other people via posting, commenting, messaging, games, social events, and applications. Due to the growth of user's distributed information in social network, there is a great potential to utilize the social data to enhance the quality of recommender system. There are some researches focusing on social network analysis that investigate how social network can be used in recommendation domain. Among these researches, we are interested in taking advantages of the interaction between a user and others in social network that can be determined and known as social relationship. Furthermore, mostly user's decisions before purchasing some products depend on suggestion of people who have either the same preferences or closer relationship. For this reason, we believe that user's relationship in social network can provide an effective way to increase the quality in prediction user's interests of recommender system. Therefore, social relationship between users encountered from social network is a common factor to improve the way of predicting user's preferences in the conventional approach. Recommender system is dramatically increasing in popularity and currently being used by many e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, Last.fm, eBay.com, etc. Collaborative filtering (CF) method is one of the essential and powerful techniques in recommender system for suggesting the appropriate items to user by learning user's preferences. CF method focuses on user data and generates automatic prediction about user's interests by gathering information from users who share similar background and preferences. Specifically, the intension of CF method is to find users who have similar preferences and to suggest target user items that were mostly preferred by those nearest neighbor users. There are two basic units that need to be considered by CF method, the user and the item. Each user needs to provide his rating value on items i.e. movies, products, books, etc to indicate their interests on those items. In addition, CF uses the user-rating matrix to find a group of users who have similar rating with target user. Then, it predicts unknown rating value for items that target user has not rated. Currently, CF has been successfully implemented in both information filtering and e-commerce applications. However, it remains some important challenges such as cold start, data sparsity, and scalability reflected on quality and accuracy of prediction. In order to overcome these challenges, many researchers have proposed various kinds of CF method such as hybrid CF, trust-based CF, social network-based CF, etc. In the purpose of improving the recommendation performance and prediction accuracy of standard CF, in this paper we propose a method which integrates traditional CF technique with social relationship between users discovered from user's behavior in social network i.e. Facebook. We identify user's relationship from behavior of user such as posts and comments interacted with friends in Facebook. We believe that social relationship implicitly inferred from user's behavior can be likely applied to compensate the limitation of conventional approach. Therefore, we extract posts and comments of each user by using Facebook Graph API and calculate feature score among each term to obtain feature vector for computing similarity of user. Then, we combine the result with similarity value computed using traditional CF technique. Finally, our system provides a list of recommended items according to neighbor users who have the biggest total similarity value to the target user. In order to verify and evaluate our proposed method we have performed an experiment on data collected from our Movies Rating System. Prediction accuracy evaluation is conducted to demonstrate how much our algorithm gives the correctness of recommendation to user in terms of MAE. Then, the evaluation of performance is made to show the effectiveness of our method in terms of precision, recall, and F1-measure. Evaluation on coverage is also included in our experiment to see the ability of generating recommendation. The experimental results show that our proposed method outperform and more accurate in suggesting items to users with better performance. The effectiveness of user's behavior in social network particularly shows the significant improvement by up to 6% on recommendation accuracy. Moreover, experiment of recommendation performance shows that incorporating social relationship observed from user's behavior into CF is beneficial and useful to generate recommendation with 7% improvement of performance compared with benchmark methods. Finally, we confirm that interaction between users in social network is able to enhance the accuracy and give better recommendation in conventional approach.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-38
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• 1972

1. Objective of the Study The objective of the study was to make fundamental suggestions for drawing a forest insurance system applicable in Korea by investigating forest insurance systems undertaken in foreign countries, analyzing the forest hazards occurred in entire forests of Korea in the past, and hearing the opinions of people engaged in forestry. 2. Methods of the Study First, reference studies on insurance at large as well as on forest insurance were intensively made to draw the characteristics of forest insurance practiced in main forestry countries, Second, the investigations of forest hazards in Korea for the past ten years were made with the help of the Office of Forestry. Third, the questionnaires concerning forest insurance were prepared and delivered at random to 533 personnel who are working at different administrative offices of forestry, forest stations, forest cooperatives, colleges and universities, research institutes, and fire insurance companies. Fourth, fifty three representative forest owners in the area of three forest types (coniferous, hardwood, and mixed forest), a representative region in Kyonggi Province out of fourteen collective forest development programs in Korea, were directly interviewed with the writer. 3. Results of the Study The rate of response to the questionnaire was 74.40% as shown in the table 3, and the results of the questionaire were as follows: (% in the parenthes shows the rates of response; shortages in amount to 100% were due to the facts of excluding the rates of response of minor respondents). 1) Necessity of forest insurance The respondents expressed their opinions that forest insurance must be undertaken to assure forest financing (5.65%); for receiving the reimbursement of replanting costs in case of damages done (35.87%); and to protect silvicultural investments (46.74%). 2) Law of forest insurance Few respondents showed their views in favor of applying the general insurance regulations to forest insurance practice (9.35%), but the majority of respondents were in favor of passing a special forest insurance law in the light of forest characteristics (88.26%). 3) Sorts of institutes to undertake forest insurance A few respondents believed that insurance companies at large could take care of forest insurance (17.42%); forest owner's mutual associations would manage the forest insurance more effectively (23.53%); but the more than half of the respondents were in favor of establishing public or national forest insurance institutes (56.18%). 4) Kinds of risks to be undertaken in forest insurance It would be desirable that the risks to be undertaken in forest insurance be limited: To forest fire hazards only (23.38%); to forest fire hazards plus damages made by weather (14.32%); to forest fire hazards, weather damages, and insect damages (60.68%). 5) Objectives to be insured It was responded that the objectives to be included in forest insurance should be limited: (1) To artificial coniferous forest only (13.47%); (2) to both coniferous and broad-leaved artificial forests (23.74%); (3) but the more than half of the respondents showed their desire that all the forests regardless of species and the methods of establishment should be insured (61.64%). 6) Range of risks in age of trees to be included in forest insurance The opinions of the respondents showed that it might be enough to insure the trees less than ten years of age (15.23%); but it would be more desirous of taking up forest trees under twenty years of age (32.95%); nevertheless, a large number of respondents were in favor of underwriting all the forest trees less than fourty years of age (46.37%). 7) Term of a forest insurance contract Quite a few respondents favored a contract made on one year basis (31.74%), but the more than half of the respondents favored the contract made on five year bases (58.68%). 8) Limitation in a forest insurance contract The respondents indicated that it would be desirable in a forest insurance contract to exclude forests less than five hectars (20.78%), but more than half of the respondents expressed their opinions that forests above a minimum volume or number of trees per unit area should be included in a forest insurance contract regardless of the area of forest lands (63.77%). 9) Methods of contract Some responded that it would be good to let the forest owners choose their forests in making a forest insurance contract (32.13%); others inclined to think that it would be desirable to include all the forests that owners hold whenerver they decide to make a forest insurance contract (33.48%); the rest responded in favor of forcing the owners to buy insurance policy if they own the forests that were established with subsidy or own highly vauable growing stock (31.92%) 10) Rate of premium The responses were divided into three categories: (1) The rate of primium is to be decided according to the regional degree of risks(27.72%); (2) to be decided by taking consideration both regional degree of risks and insurable values(31.59%); (3) and to be decided according to the rate of risks for the entire country and the insurable values (39.55%). 11) Payment of Premium Although a few respondents wished to make a payment of premium at once for a short term forest insurance contract, and an annual payment for a long term contract (13.80%); the majority of the respondents wished to pay the premium annually regardless of the term of contract, by employing a high rate of premium on a short term contract, but a low rate on a long term contract (83.71%). 12) Institutes in charge of forest insurance business A few respondents showed their desire that forest insurance be taken care of at the government forest administrative offices (18.75%); others at insurance companies (35.76%); but the rest, the largest number of the respondents, favored forest associations in the county. They also wanted to pay a certain rate of premium to the forest associations that issue the insurance (44.22%). 13) Limitation on indemnity for damages done In limitation on indemnity for damages done, the respondents showed a quite different views. Some desired compesation to cover replanting costs when young stands suffered damages and to be paid at the rate of eighty percent to the losses received when matured timber stands suffered damages(29.70%); others desired to receive compensation of the actual total loss valued at present market prices (31.07%); but the rest responded in favor of compensation at the present value figured out by applying a certain rate of prolongation factors to the establishment costs(36.99%). 14) Raising of funds for forest insurance A few respondents hoped to raise the fund for forest insurance by setting aside certain amount of money from the indemnity paid (15.65%); others wished to raise the fund by levying new forest land taxes(33.79%); but the rest expressed their hope to raise the fund by reserving certain amount of money from the surplus money that was saved due to the non-risks (44.81%). 15) Causes of fires The main causes of forest fires 6gured out by the respondents experience turned out to be (1) an accidental fire, (2) cigarettes, (3) shifting cultivation. The reponses were coincided with the forest fire analysis made by the Office of Forestry. 16) Fire prevention The respondents suggested that the most important and practical three kinds of forest fire prevention measures would be (1) providing a fire-break, (2) keeping passers-by out during the drought seasons, (3) enlightenment through mass communication systems. 4. Suggestions The writer wishes to present some suggestions that seemed helpful in drawing up a forest insurance system by reviewing the findings in the questionaire analysis and the results of investigations on forest insurance undertaken in foreign countries. 1) A forest insurance system designed to compensate the loss figured out on the basis of replanting cost when young forest stands suffered damages, and to strengthen credit rating by relieving of risks of damages, must be put in practice as soon as possible with the enactment of a specifically drawn forest insurance law. And the committee of forest insurance should be organized to make a full study of forest insurance system. 2) Two kinds of forest insurance organizations furnishing forest insurance, publicly-owned insurance organizations and privately-owned, are desirable in order to handle forest risks properly. The privately-owned forest insurance organizations should take up forest fire insurance only, and the publicly-owned ought to write insurance for forest fires and insect damages. 3) The privately-owned organizations furnishing forest insurance are desired to take up all the forest stands older than twenty years; whereas, the publicly-owned should sell forest insurance on artificially planted stands younger than twenty years with emphasis on compensating replanting costs of forest stands when they suffer damages. 4) Small forest stands, less than one hectare holding volume or stocked at smaller than standard per unit area are not to be included in a forest insurance writing, and the minimum term of insuring should not be longer than one year in the privately-owned forest insurance organizations although insuring period could be extended more than one year; whereas, consecutive five year term of insurance periods should be set as a mimimum period of insuring forest in the publicly-owned forest insurance organizations. 5) The forest owners should be free in selecting their forests in insuring; whereas, forest owners of the stands that were established with subsidy should be required to insure their forests at publicly-owned forest insurance organizations. 6) Annual insurance premiums for both publicly-owned and privately-owned forest insurance organizations ought to be figured out in proportion to the amount of insurance in accordance with the degree of risks which are grouped into three categories on the basis of the rate of risks throughout the country. 7) Annual premium should be paid at the beginning of forest insurance contract, but reduction must be made if the insuring periods extend longer than a minimum period of forest insurance set by the law. 8) The compensation for damages, the reimbursement, should be figured out on the basis of the ratio between the amount of insurance and insurable value. In the publicly-owned forest insurance system, the standard amount of insurance should be set on the basis of establishment costs in order to prevent over-compensation. 9) Forest insurance business is to be taken care of at the window of insurance com pnies when forest owners buy the privately-owned forest insurance, but the business of writing the publicly-owned forest insurance should be done through the forest cooperatives and certain portions of the premium be reimbursed to the forest cooperatives. 10) Forest insurance funds ought to be reserved by levying a property tax on forest lands. 11) In order to prevent forest damages, the forest owners should be required to report forest hazards immediately to the forest insurance organizations and the latter should bear the responsibility of taking preventive measures.