Response of Ground Beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) to Vegetation Structure in Wildlife Crossings (생태통로 내부 식생구조에 대한 지표성 딱정벌레류(딱정벌레목: 딱정벌레과)의 반응)
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- Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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- v.30 no.2
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- pp.185-198
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- 2016
Korea has put in significant efforts to increase the number of wildlife crossings between fragmented habitats to prevent loss of biodiversity and to encourage the habitat connectivity in Korea. However, there is a lack of biological data on the effect of vegetation structure in these wildlife crossings and guidelines for design and management of wildlife crossing structures in Korea. Therefore, we selected ground beetle assemblages as model organisms to compare the effect of vegetation structure in wildlife crossings, i.e. bare ground- and shrub-type corridors, in agro-forested landscapes. For this study, 4,207 ground beetles belonging to 33 species were collected through pitfall trapping along the northern forest-corridor-southern forest transects from late April to early September in 2015. Dominant species, abundance, and species richness of ground beetles were significantly higher in the shrub-type corridors than the bare ground-type corridors. Also, the species composition of bare ground-type corridor was significantly different compared to the other habitats such as shrub-type corridor and forests. Similarly, environmental variables were also influenced by vegetation management regimes or trap locations. Collectively, our study clearly indicates that the movement of forest associated ground beetles between forest patches can increase as the vegetation in wildlife crossings becomes complex. Although further studies are needed to verify this, there are indications that the current wildlife crossings that comply with the guidelines may be unfriendly to the movement of ground dwelling arthropods as well as ground beetles. To enhance the ecological function of wildlife crossings, the guidelines need to be rectified as follows: 1) Shrubs or trees should be planted along the corridor verges to provide refuge or movement paths for small mammals and ground dwelling arthropods, and 2) Open spaces should be provided in the middle of the corridors to be used as a path for the movement of large mammals.
This study aimed to analyze the current status of planted trees in Seoul Forest and propose improvement plans to improve the naturalness in the park. A comprehensive survey of the trees in the park was conducted, and the data gathered was used to build a list of planting trees suitable for an urban park. The analysis of the characteristics of landscape trees in Seoul Forest by type was about the presence or absence of leaves, and they were classified into deciduous trees, evergreen trees, deciduous shrubs, and evergreen shrubs, and herbaceous plants such as groundcover plants separately classified. The study found that Seoul Forest had 57 species of native and naturalized trees, with 27 deciduous trees, 35 deciduous shrubs, 15 evergreen trees, and 98 evergreen shrubs. The park also had 472 species of herbaceous plants, totaling 320,000. The majority of planted trees in Seoul Forest were native species, comprising 59% of the total planted trees, while naturalized species made up 41%. Furthermore, the ratio of deciduous trees to evergreen trees was 81% to 19%, with deciduous trees being the dominant species. The evergreen trees showed a similar trend, with a total of 23 species, including 15 native and 8 foreign species, accounting for 65% of native species. In addition, the study identified six common deciduous shrubs, including Forsythia koreana, orbaria sorbifolia var. stellipila, Deutzia parviflora, Rhododendron lateritium, and Spiraea prunifolia var. simpliciflora, which are frequently planted in areas with abundant water. The study also revealed that among the 10 evergreen shrub species, 9 were native and 1 was foreign. The study aimed to classify the species planted in Seoul Forest into native and foreign species and to provide a data-driven plan to encourage the planting of native species. This study offers valuable insights into planting planning and design for urban parks, which is essential for enhancing naturalness, as most studies have primarily focused on usage patterns and satisfaction in urban parks. By promoting the planting of native species, the naturalness of Seoul Forest can be improved.
Genetic studies on the
With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.
The wall shear stress in the vicinity of end-to end anastomoses under steady flow conditions was measured using a flush-mounted hot-film anemometer(FMHFA) probe. The experimental measurements were in good agreement with numerical results except in flow with low Reynolds numbers. The wall shear stress increased proximal to the anastomosis in flow from the Penrose tubing (simulating an artery) to the PTFE: graft. In flow from the PTFE graft to the Penrose tubing, low wall shear stress was observed distal to the anastomosis. Abnormal distributions of wall shear stress in the vicinity of the anastomosis, resulting from the compliance mismatch between the graft and the host artery, might be an important factor of ANFH formation and the graft failure. The present study suggests a correlation between regions of the low wall shear stress and the development of anastomotic neointimal fibrous hyperplasia(ANPH) in end-to-end anastomoses. 30523 T00401030523 ^x Air pressure decay(APD) rate and ultrafiltration rate(UFR) tests were performed on new and saline rinsed dialyzers as well as those roused in patients several times. C-DAK 4000 (Cordis Dow) and CF IS-11 (Baxter Travenol) reused dialyzers obtained from the dialysis clinic were used in the present study. The new dialyzers exhibited a relatively flat APD, whereas saline rinsed and reused dialyzers showed considerable amount of decay. C-DAH dialyzers had a larger APD(11.70
The wall shear stress in the vicinity of end-to end anastomoses under steady flow conditions was measured using a flush-mounted hot-film anemometer(FMHFA) probe. The experimental measurements were in good agreement with numerical results except in flow with low Reynolds numbers. The wall shear stress increased proximal to the anastomosis in flow from the Penrose tubing (simulating an artery) to the PTFE: graft. In flow from the PTFE graft to the Penrose tubing, low wall shear stress was observed distal to the anastomosis. Abnormal distributions of wall shear stress in the vicinity of the anastomosis, resulting from the compliance mismatch between the graft and the host artery, might be an important factor of ANFH formation and the graft failure. The present study suggests a correlation between regions of the low wall shear stress and the development of anastomotic neointimal fibrous hyperplasia(ANPH) in end-to-end anastomoses. 30523 T00401030523 ^x Air pressure decay(APD) rate and ultrafiltration rate(UFR) tests were performed on new and saline rinsed dialyzers as well as those roused in patients several times. C-DAK 4000 (Cordis Dow) and CF IS-11 (Baxter Travenol) reused dialyzers obtained from the dialysis clinic were used in the present study. The new dialyzers exhibited a relatively flat APD, whereas saline rinsed and reused dialyzers showed considerable amount of decay. C-DAH dialyzers had a larger APD(11.70