• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.39-69
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• 2012

With the advent of communication technologies including electronic collaborative tools and conferencing systems provided over the Internet, virtual collaboration is becoming increasingly common in organizations. Virtual collaboration refers to an environment in which the people working together are interdependent in their tasks, share responsibility for outcomes, are geographically dispersed, and rely on mediated rather than face-to face, communication to produce an outcome. Research suggests that new sets of individual skill, knowledge, and ability (SKAs) are required to perform effectively in today's virtualized workplace, which is labeled as individual virtual competence. It is also argued that use of online social networking sites may influence not only individuals' daily lives but also their capability to manage their work-related relationships in organizations, which in turn leads to better performance. The existing research regarding (1) the relationship between virtual competence and task performance and (2) the relationship between online networking and task performance has been conducted based on different theoretical perspectives so that little is known about how online social networking and virtual competence interplay to predict individuals' task performance. To fill this gap, this study raises the following research questions: (1) What is the individual virtual competence required for better adjustment to the virtual collaboration environment? (2) How does online networking via diverse social network service sites influence individuals' task performance in organizations? (3) How do the joint effects of individual virtual competence and online networking influence task performance? To address these research questions, we first draw on the prior literature and derive four dimensions of individual virtual competence that are related with an individual's self-concept, knowledge and ability. Computer self-efficacy is defined as the extent to which an individual beliefs in his or her ability to use computer technology broadly. Remotework self-efficacy is defined as the extent to which an individual beliefs in his or her ability to work and perform joint tasks with others in virtual settings. Virtual media skill is defined as the degree of confidence of individuals to function in their work role without face-to-face interactions. Virtual social skill is an individual's skill level in using technologies to communicate in virtual settings to their full potential. It should be noted that the concept of virtual social skill is different from the self-efficacy and captures an individual's cognition-based ability to build social relationships with others in virtual settings. Next, we discuss how online networking influences both individual virtual competence and task performance based on the social network theory and the social learning theory. We argue that online networking may enhance individuals' capability in expanding their social networks with low costs. We also argue that online networking may enable individuals to learn the necessary skills regarding how they use technological functions, communicate with others, and share information and make social relations using the technical functions provided by electronic media, consequently increasing individual virtual competence. To examine the relationships among online networking, virtual competence, and task performance, we developed research models (the mediation, interaction, and additive models, respectively) by integrating the social network theory and the social learning theory. Using data from 112 employees of a virtualized company, we tested the proposed research models. The results of analysis partly support the mediation model in that online social networking positively influences individuals' computer self-efficacy, virtual social skill, and virtual media skill, which are key predictors of individuals' task performance. Furthermore, the results of the analysis partly support the interaction model in that the level of remotework self-efficacy moderates the relationship between online social networking and task performance. The results paint a picture of people adjusting to virtual collaboration that constrains and enables their task performance. This study contributes to research and practice. First, we suggest a shift of research focus to the individual level when examining virtual phenomena and theorize that online social networking can enhance individual virtual competence in some aspects. Second, we replicate and advance the prior competence literature by linking each component of virtual competence and objective task performance. The results of this study provide useful insights into how human resource responsibilities assess employees' weakness and strength when they organize virtualized groups or projects. Furthermore, it provides managers with insights into the kinds of development or training programs that they can engage in with their employees to advance their ability to undertake virtual work.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.33-41
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• 2009

The crushed fruiting body of Alaskan Porodaedalea pini (Brot.) Murrill (syn. Phellinus pini) was extracted in boiling water for 4 h with the yield of 20.5% in dry mass. This hot-water extract showed significant antiviral activity by inhibiting the plaque formation in HeLa cells by coxackievirus B3 (CVB3) and also showed highest inhibitory effect against neuraminidase activity among water extracts of various mushrooms. From the water extract, the ethanol precipitate (EP) and supernatant fraction (ES) were obtained through 75% ethanol precipitation with the yield of 43.3% and 28.3% in dry mass, respectively. Whereas ES did not show any detectable level of antiviral activity, EP showed significant dose-dependent inhibition of plaque formation by CVB3 in HeLa cells with an $EC_{50}$ (50% effective concentration) of 0.45 mg/mL. The cytotoxicity on HeLa cells by EP was relatively low with the $CC_{50}$ (50% cytotoxic concentration) of 2.25 mg/mL. EP also effectively inhibited neuraminidase activity in a dose-dependent manner showing up to 75% inhibition at 1.7 mg/mL. These results suggest that the hot-water extract and its EP of P. pini fruiting body can be a candidate for the development of a potent broad-range antiviral agent against influenza virus(Flu) as well as CVB3. The major active component of EP was shown to be a heteropolysaccharide-protein complex containing glucose as the main sugar residue with mole percentage of 79.8% and other sugars like galactose (19.2%), xylose (17%), mannose (5.8%), and fucose (4.6%) and a small portion (12.7%, in mass) of protein.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.156-164
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• 2015

High temperature stress would affect rice production in the future as heat wave is expected to occur frequently under climate change conditions. The objective of this study was to obtain rudimentary information to assess the impact of heat stress on rice yield and its yield component in Korea. Two rice cultivars "Hwaseongbyeo" (Japonica) and "Dasanbyeo" (Tongil-type) were grown at different nitrogen fertilization levels in two seasons. These cultivars were grown in 1/5000a Wagner pot placed within four plastic houses where temperature was controlled at ambient, ambient$+1.5^{\circ}C$, ambient$+3^{\circ}C$ and ambient$+5^{\circ}C$ throughout the rice growing season in Suwon ($37^{\circ}16^{\prime}N$, $128^{\circ}59^{\prime}E$), Korea. The degree of temperature change affected grain yield whereas the level of nitrogen had little impact on grain yield. The number of panicle per pot and spikelet per panicle were not significantly different among temperature treatments in both cultivars tested. In contrast, 1000-grain weight and ripened grain ratio were decreased significantly under the treatments raising the air temperature to the level of $5.0^{\circ}C$ and $1.5^{\circ}C$ above the ambient air temperature in Dasanbyeo and Hwaseongbyeo, respectively. Reduction of 1000-grain weight and ripened grain ratio under the temperature treatments of $3.0^{\circ}C$ and $5.0^{\circ}C$ above the ambient air temperature resulted in significantly less grain yield for Dasanbyeo and Hwaseongbyeo, respectively. The greater sensitivity of grain yield to temperature increase in Dasanbyeo was attributable to the sharp decrease of 1000-grain weight and ripened grain ratio with the temperature rise above $23^{\circ}C$ during ripening period. On the other hand, Hwaseongbyeo had little variation of them in the temperature range of $23-27^{\circ}C$. These results suggested that grain yield would decrease under future climate conditions due to grain weight decreased by shorter grain filling period as well as the ripened grain ratio reduced by spikelet sterility and early abortion of rice kernel development. Thus, it would be essential to use cultivars tolerant to heat stress for climate change adaptation, which merits further studies for developing varieties that have traits to avoid spikelet sterility and early abortion of rice kernel, e.g., early morning flowering, under heat wave.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.485-492
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• 1986

This study was designed to compare the inhibitory effects of algae components such as alginic acid and chlorella extract with the red ginseng saponin and garlic components such as alliin and scordinin on obesity. These components supplemented to basic diet were fed ad libitum to Sprague Dawley rats for 4 weeks, and the inhibitory effects on obesity were evaluated by measuring body weight gain and feed efficiency, the contents of glucose and cholesterol in serum, lipase activity in serum, lipid contents in liver and adipose tissue around epididymis and ovarium, and Lee index, etc. Among the inhibitory effects of these components on obesity, Na-alginate($71\%$) was the most effective (p<0.01), and the others were effective (p<0.001) in the order of scordinin ($76\%$) = chlorella ($76\%$)> alliin ($86\%$) for body weight gain, but Na-alginate ($68\%$) was the most effective, followed by alliin ($79\%$) for feed efficiency (p<0.001). In the inhibitory effects on lipid accumultion in liver and adipose tissue, Na-alginate ($84\%$) among these components was the most effective (p<0.001) in liver, but Na-alginate ($54\%$) was the most effective (p<0.001), followed by alliin ($64\%$), and followed by scordinin ($66\%$) in adipose tissues around epididymis and ovarium (p<0.001). The inhibitory effect on obesity evaluated by Lee index was observed in Na-alginate ($91\%$) only (0.001). The decreasing effects of lipid content in liver by these components were effective in the order of alliin ($40\%$)> saponin ($58\%$)> Na-alginate($62\%$)> chlorella ($64\%$)> scordinin ($74\%$) (p<0.001). G lucose contents in serum were significantly decreased in cases of Na-alginate ($67\%$), saponin ($73\%$), scordinin ($74\%$) and alliin ($83\%$), and cholesterol contents in serum were significantly decreased in cases of Na-alginate ($82\%$), chlorella ($86\%$) and saponin ($89\%$) (p<0.001). The increasing effect of lipase activity in serum was effective in cases of Na-alginate ($109\%$) and saponin ($104\%$), while garlic components such as alliin and scordinin, and chlorella were decreased. It is proved that the inhibitory effect of alginic acid which is the major component of brown algae on obesity was more effective than those of ginseng and garlic components such as saponin, alliin and scordinin.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-22
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• 2009

The World Wide Web is transitioning from being a mere collection of documents that contain useful information toward providing a collection of services that perform useful tasks. The emerging Web service technology has been envisioned as the next technological wave and is expected to play an important role in this recent transformation of the Web. By providing interoperable interface standards for application-to-application communication, Web services can be combined with component based software development to promote application interaction and integration both within and across enterprises. To make Web services for service-oriented computing operational, it is important that Web service repositories not only be well-structured but also provide efficient tools for developers to find reusable Web service components that meet their needs. As the potential of Web services for service-oriented computing is being widely recognized, the demand for effective Web service discovery mechanisms is concomitantly growing. A number of techniques for Web service discovery have been proposed, but the discovery challenge has not been satisfactorily addressed. Unfortunately, most existing solutions are either too rudimentary to be useful or too domain dependent to be generalizable. In this paper, we propose a Web service organizing framework that combines clustering techniques with string matching and leverages the semantics of the XML-based service specification in WSDL documents. We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying data mining techniques in the Web service discovery domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) It minimizes the requirement of prior knowledge from both service consumers and publishers; (2) It avoids exploiting domain dependent ontologies; and (3) It is able to visualize the semantic relationships among Web services. We have developed a prototype system based on the proposed framework using an unsupervised artificial neural network and empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real Web service descriptions drawn from operational Web service registries. We report on some preliminary results demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed approach.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.197-201
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• 2007

Oil soluble licorice extract(licorice extract) is an officially approved cosmetic component as a whitening ingredient in Korea. The durability of licorice, during which the whitening effect can be maintained in optimum condition, must be accurately defined. Since the cosmetics durability under real condition is relatively longer than its development time. It is needed to predict the real durability interval from the experimental measurement under simulated operating conditions. We analyzed the relationship between the licorice lifetime and the high temperature condition by using Arrhenius equation. We have established the constant stress test with temperature of $50^{\circ}C$, $55^{\circ}C$, and $60^{\circ}C$ condition, within which no formulation change of licorice products is expected for the accelerated stress test. In this paper, the lifetime of licorice in cosmetics was defined as time period for its 10% contents reduction. We observed that the lifetime of licorice is 580 h at $50^{\circ}C$, 319 h at $55^{\circ}C$ and 166 h at $60^{\circ}C$. Using the above experimental data, we obtained the equation for the relationship between the licorice lifetime and temperature as follows; log(lifetime)=-35.0243 + 1.15322$\times$(11604.83/temperature). From this equation, the lifetime of licorice at $25^{\circ}C$ can be estimated as 26 months. The estimated result was verified by measuring full lifetime of licorice. In fact, there was no significant difference between the estimated lifetime and real measurement within 95 % significance level. This study can be applied to other useful cosmetic components for the fast estimation of the exact durability.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.105-110
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• 1984

Seven seed samples of corn obtained from Kangweon Provincial Office of Rural Development, Kerea were tested for seed-borne fungi, and found that all the samples tested were infected with Fusarium moniliforme to an extent of $6.0{\sim}79.5%$. Severely infected seed samples showed poor germination on blotter. Seed component plating showed that the fungus present not only in tip caps, pericarps and endosperms, but also in embryos. Heavy infection of the fungus caused severe seed rot and seedling blight in soil, but the damage was not severe and many plants grew without any symptoms when the seeds with light infection were sown in soil. However the fungus was frequently detected from inside of the stems of healthy looking seedlings. The results indicate that the fungus transmit from seed to plant systemically. In inoculation experiments, the fungus produced stem rots on corn plants of 110 days old. The cultivar of Hwangok 3 was revealed more susceptible to the fungus than that of Suweon 19.

• The Journal of the Petrological Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.75-103
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• 2014

The Quaternary faults are extensively observed along major inherited fault zones (i.e. Yangsan Fault System, Ulsan Fault, Yeonil Tectonic Line, Ocheon Fault System) in SE Korea. Their geometry and kinematics provide a very useful piece of information about the Quaternary crustal deformation and stress field in and around Korean Peninsula. Using magnetic fabrics (AMS), we attempted to determine the slip senses of Jinti, Mohwa, Suseongji2, and Wangsan faults and then interpreted the fabric development process of fault gouge and the characteristics of stress field during the Quaternary. All the magnetic fabrics of the faults, except the Wangsan Fault, consistently indicate a dominant reverse-slip sense with weak strike-slip component. Most of the oblate fabrics are nearly parallel to the fault surface and the anisotropy degrees generally increase in proportion to the oblatenesses. These results suggest that the fabrics of the fault gouges resulted from a progressive deformation due to continuous simple shear during the last reactivation stage as reverse faulting. It is also interpreted that the pre-existing fabrics were overwhelmed and obliterated by the re-activated faulting. Paleostress field calculated from the fault slip data indicates an ENE-WNW compressive stress, which is in accord with those determined from previous fault tectonic analysis, focal mechanism solution, and hydraulic fracturing test in and around Korean Peninsula.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.374-381
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• 2015

Occurrences of coastal dredged materials are ever increasing due to port construction, navigational course maintenance and dredging of polluted coastal sediments. Ocean dumping of the coastal dredged materials has become virtually prohibited as London Treaty will be enacted as of the year 2012. It will be necessary to treat and recycle the dredged materials that may carry organic pollutants and heavy metals in a reasonable and effective process: collection of the dredged materials, liquid and solid separation, and treatment of organic compounds and heavy metals. In this study we have developed a continuous bioreactor system that can treat a mixture of silt and particulate organic matter using a microbial consortium (BM-S-1). The steady-state operation conditions were: pH (7.4-7.5), temperature ($16^{\circ}C$), DO (7.5-7.9), and salt concentration (3.4-3.7%). The treatment efficiencies of SCOD, T-N and T-P of the mixture were 95-96%, 92-99%, and 79-97%. The system was also effective in removal of heavy metals such as Zn, Ni, and Cr. Levels of MLSS during three months operation period were 11,000-19,000 mg/L. Interestingly, there was little sludge generated during this period of operation. The augmented microbial consortium seemed to be quite active in the removal of the organic component (30%) present in the dredged material in association with indigenous bacteria. The dominant phyla in the treatment processes were Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes while dominant genii were Marinobacterium, Flaviramulus, Formosa, Alteromonadaceae_uc, Flavobacteriaceae_uc. These results will contribute to a development of a successful bioremediation technology for various coastal and river sediments with a high content of organic matter, inorganic nutrients and heavy metals, leading to a successful reuse of the polluted dredged sediments.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.43 no.9
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• pp.1380-1387
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to develop a mouthwash product with solid fermented oriental medicinal herb (OMH). Solid fermentation of magnolia, liquorice, and cnidium by Phellinus linteus mycelium was carried out successfully when 30% water was added to the medium, whereas 10% brown rice powder was required as an extra nutrient for solid fermentation of mint besides water. The amount of total phenol compounds and DPPH radical scavenging activity of OMH increased significantly (P<0.05) upon solid fermentation. Anti-microbial activities of fermented OMH also increased and were approximately 100-fold greater than those of unfermented samples. Oral pathogens such as Staphylococcus epidermis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Candida albicans, or Streptococcus mutans were used for determination of anti-microbial effects of OMH. Formulation of the mouthwash was developed based on the results of the sensory evaluation. Among seven formulas, the best formula chosen by the sensory evaluation was as follows: mouthwash prepared with 0.075% ethanol extract of solid fermented OMH as a main ingredient, 83.64% hot water extract of mint and clove (100:15, v/v) as a mouthwash base component, and other miscellaneous ingredients, including sodium fluoride, menthol, and surfactants. Data from a consumer's preference test with 30 participants, overall acceptance, and willingness to buy the product developed in this study were all significantly higher for the tested mouthwash compared to mouthwash on the market manufactured with OMH but with a different formula. Duration of freshness of the mouthwash after usage as determined by Breath Checker was not significantly different between the two samples, although the duration of our product was slightly longer than that of the commercial product mentioned above.