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Evaluation of the Potential of Cellobiose as a Material for Whitening Cosmetics based on Autophagy and Melanin Production Efficacy in Melanocytes (셀로비오스의 미백화장품 소재 가능성 평가를 위한 멜라닌 세포에서 자가포식 및 멜라닌 생성 효능 연구)

  • Byungsun, Cha;Seok ju, Lee;Sofia, Brito;So Young, Jung;So Min, Lee;Lei, Lei;Sang Hun, Lee;Zubaidah, Al-Khafaji;Bum-Ho, Bin;Byeong-Mun, Kwak;Hyojin, Heo
    • Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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    • v.48 no.4
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    • pp.365-372
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    • 2022
  • Cellobiose is a dissacharide constituted by two glucose units joined by a β-('1,4') glycosidic bond that is produced by the decomposition of cellulose. This product exists naturally in plants and has been utilized in different industries as a food sweetener, and as a cosmetic and pharmaceutical material. In this study, the potential of cellobiose as a whitening cosmetic product was evaluated by analyzing autophagy induction and the inhibition of melanin production. A cytotoxicity test conducted in the human melanin-producing cell line MNT-1 with increasing concentrations of cellobiose revealed that this compound did not cause cytotoxicity at 20 mg/mL or less. Based on this, autophagy was firstly evaluated by immunostaining with the autophagy marker microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3) after treatment with 20 mg/mL of cellobiose. The subsequent confocal microscopy analysis revealed an increase in LC3 puncta, indicating induction of autophagy. In addition, autophagy was further confirmed by western blot analysis, which demonstrated that cellobiose converted LC3-I to LC3- ∏ in a concentration- and time-dependent manners. An analysis of melanin contents after cellobiose treatment at a concentration of 20 mg/mL during 7 days revealed that melanin production was reduced by more than 50%. Additionally, the expression levels of melanogenesis-related proteins TYR and TYRP1 were markedly decreased after cellobiose treatment. Based on these studies, a cosmetic cream formulation containing cellobiose was prepared and the change in formulation was tested for 4 weeks, and it was confirmed that the appearance changed to liquid form at high temperature, but the pH did not change. In conclusion, the present research demonstrated that cellobiose activates autophagy and inhibits melanin production, and showed the potential of this product as a material for whitening cosmetics.

Study of the Residential Environment and Accessibility of Rehabilitation for Patients with Cerebral Palsy (뇌성마비 환자의 주거 환경과 재활 접근성에 관한 연구)

  • Cho, Gyeong Hee;Chung, Chin Youb;Lee, Kyoung Min;Sung, Ki Hyuk;Cho, Byung Chae;Park, Moon Seok
    • Journal of the Korean Orthopaedic Association
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    • v.54 no.4
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    • pp.309-316
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    • 2019
  • Purpose: This study examined the residential environment and accessibility of rehabilitation for cerebral palsy (CP) to identify the problems with residential laws pertaining to the disabled and provide basic data on the health legislation for the rights of the disabled. Materials and Methods: The literature was searched using three keywords: residence, rehabilitation, and accessibility. Two items were selected: residential environment and rehabilitation accessibility. The questionnaire included 51 items; 24 were scored using a Likert scale and 27 were in the form of multiple-choice questions. Results: This study included 100 subjects, of which 93 lived at home and seven lived in a facility. Of these 93 subjects, 65% were living in apartments, usually two or more floors above ground, and 40% of them were living without elevators. According to the Gross Motor Function Classification System, subjects with I to III belonged to the ambulatory group and IV, V were in the non-ambulatory group. Subjects from both groups who lived at home found it most difficult to visit the rehabilitation center by themselves. In contrast, among those who lived at the facility, the ambulatory group found it most difficult to leave the facility alone, while the non-ambulatory group found it most difficult to use the toilet alone. Moreover, 83% of respondents thought that rehabilitation was necessary for CP. On the other hand, 33% are receiving rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation was performed for an average of 3.6 sessions per week, 39 minutes per session. Conclusion: There is no law that ensures secure and convenient access of CP to higher levels. Laws on access routes to enter rooms are insufficient. The disabled people's law and the disabled person's health law will be implemented in December 2017. It is necessary to enact laws that actually reflect the difficulties of people with disabilities. Based on the results of this study, an investigation of the housing and rehabilitation of patients with CP through a large-scale questionnaire will necessary.

Study on Basic Elements for Smart Content through the Market Status-quo (스마트콘텐츠 현황분석을 통한 기본요소 추출)

  • Kim, Gyoung Sun;Park, Joo Young;Kim, Yi Yeon
    • Korea Science and Art Forum
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    • v.21
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    • pp.31-43
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    • 2015
  • Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the technologies which represent the core value of the creative economy. It has served as a vehicle connecting the existing industry and corporate infrastructure, developing existing products and services and creating new products and services. In addition to the ICT, new devices including big data, mobile gadgets and wearable products are gaining a great attention sending an expectation for a new market-pioneering. Further, Internet of Things (IoT) is helping solidify the ICT-based social development connecting human-to-human, human-to-things and things-to-things. This means that the manufacturing-based hardware development needs to be achieved simultaneously with software development through convergence. The essential element the convergence between hardware and software is OS, for which world's leading companies such as Google and Apple have launched an intense development recognizing the importance of software. Against this backdrop, the status-quo of the software market has been examined for the study of the present report (Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology: Professional Design Technology Development Project). As a result, the software platform-based Google's android and Apple's iOS are dominant in the global market and late comers are trying to enter the market through various pathways by releasing web-based OS and similar OS to provide a new paradigm to the market. The present study is aimed at finding the way to utilize a smart content by which anyone can be a developer based on OS responding to such as social change, newly defining a smart content to be universally utilized and analyzing the market to deal with a rapid market change. The study method, scope and details are as follows: Literature investigation, Analysis on the app market according to a smart classification system, Trend analysis on the current content market, Identification of five common trends through comparison among the universal definition of smart content, the status-quo of application represented in the app market and content market situation. In conclusion, the smart content market is independent but is expected to develop in the form of a single organic body being connected each other. Therefore, the further classification system and development focus should be made in a way to see the area from multiple perspectives including a social point of view in terms of the existing technology, culture, business and consumers.

The Effect of Users' Personality on Emotional and Cognitive Evaluation in UCC Web Site Usage (UCC(user-created-contents) 웹 사이트에서 사용자의 인성이 감정적, 인지적 평가와 UCC 활용에 미치는 영향)

  • Moon, Yun-Ji;Kang, So-Ra;Kim, Woo-Gon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.167-190
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    • 2010
  • The research conducted here focuses on the effect of factors that affect the behavior of UCC (User Created Content) website users, other than user's rational recognition of how useful a UCC website can be. Most discussions in the existing literature on information systems have focused on users' evaluation how a UCC website can help to attain the users' own goals. However, there are other factors and this research pays attention to an individual's 'personality,' which is stable and biological in nature. Specifically, I have noted here that 'extroversion' and 'neuroticism,' the two common personality factors presented in Eysenck's most representative 'EPQ Model' and 'Big Five Model,' are the two personality factors that affect a site's 'usefulness,' by this I mean how useful does the user consider the website and its content. How useful a site is considered by the user is the other factor that has been regarded as the antecedent factor that influences the adoption of information systems in the existing MIS (Management Information System) research. Secondly, as using or creating a UCC website does not guarantee the user's or the creator's extrinsic motivation, unlike when using the information system within an organization, there is a greater likelihood that the increase in user's activities in relation to a UCC website is motivated by emotional factors rather than rational factors. Thus, I have decided to include the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable in the research model. Thirdly, when based on the S-O-R Paradigm of Mehrabian and Russell, the two cognitive factors and emotional factors are finally affected by stimulus, and thus these factors ultimately have an effect on an individual's respondent behavior. Therefore, this research has presented an assumption that the recognition of how useful the site and content is and what emotional pleasure it provides will finally affect the behavior of the UCC website users. Finally, the relationship between the recognition of how useful a site is and how pleasurable it is to useand UCC usage may differ depending on certain situational conditions. In other words, the relationship between the three factors may vary according to how much users are involved in the creation of the website content. Creation thus emerges as the keyword of UCC. I analyzed the above relationships through the moderating variable of the user's involvement in the creation of the site. The research result shows the following: When it comes to the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable it is extroverted users who have a greater likelihood to feel pleasure when using a UCC website, as was expected in this research. This in turn leads to a more active usage of the UCC web site because a person who is an extrovert likes to spend time on activities with other people, is sensitive to new experiences and stimuli and thus actively responds to these. An extroverted person accepts new UCC activities as part of his/her social life, rather than getting away from this new UCC environment. This is represented by the term 'Foxonomy' where the users meet a variety of users from all over the world and contact new types of content created by these users. However, neuroticism creates the opposite situation to that created by extroversion. The representative symptoms of neuroticism are instability, stress, and tension. These dispositions are more closely related to stress caused by a new environment rather than this creatingcuriosity or pleasure. Thus, neurotic persons have an uneasy feeling and will eventually avoid the situation where their own or others' daily lives are frequently exposed to the open web environment, this eventually makes them have a negative attitude towards the web environment. When it comes to an individual's personality and how useful site is, the two personality factors of extroversion and neuroticism both have a positive relationship with the recognition of how useful the site and its content is. The positive, curious, and social dispositions of extroverted persons tend to make them consider the future usefulness and possibilities of a new type of information system, or website, based on their positive attitude, which has a significant influence on the recognition of how useful these UCC sites are. Neuroticism also favorably affects how useful a UCC website can be through a different mechanism from that of extroversion. As the neurotic persons tend to feel uneasy and have much doubt about a new type of information system, they actively explore its usefulness in order to relieve their uncomfortable feelings. In other words, neurotic persons seek out how useful a site can be in order to secure their own stable feelings. Meanwhile, extroverted persons explore how useful a site can be because of their positive attitude and curiosity. As a lot of MIS research has revealed that the recognition of how useful a site can be and how pleasurable it can be to use have been proven to have a significant effect on UCC activity. However, the relationship between these factors reveals different aspects based on the user's involvement in creation. This factor of creationgauges the interest of users in the creation of UCC contents. Involvement is a variable that shows the level of an individual's mental effort in creating UCC contents. When a user is highly involved in the creation process and makes an enormous effort to create UCC content (classed a part of a high-involvement group), their own pleasure and recognition of how useful the site is have a significantly higher effect on the future usage of the UCC contents, more significantly than the users who sit back and just retrieve the UCC content created by others. The cognitive and emotional response of those in the low-involvement group is unlikely to last long,even if they recognize the contents of a UCC website is pleasurable and useful to them. However, the high-involvement group tends to participate in the creation and the usage of UCC more favorably, connecting the experience with their own goals. In this respect, this research presents an answer to the question; why so many people are participating in the usage of UCC, the representative form of the Web 2.0 that has drastically involved more and more people in the creation of UCC, even if they cannot gain any monetary or social compensation. Neither information system nor a website can succeed unless it secures a certain level of user base. Moreover, it cannot be further developed when the reasons, or problems, for people's participation are not suitably explored, even if it has a certain user base. Thus, what is significant in this research is that it has studied users' respondent behavior based on an individual's innate personality, emotion, and cognitive interaction, unlike the existing research that has focused on 'compensation' to explain users' participation with the UCC website. There are also limitations in this research. Firstly, I divided an individual's personality into extroversion and neuroticism; however, there are many other personal factors such as neuro-psychiatricism, which also needs to be analyzed for its influence on UCC activities. Secondly, as a UCC website comes in many types such as multimedia, Wikis, and podcasting, these types need to be included as a sub-category of the UCC websites and their relationship with personality, emotion, cognition, and behavior also needs to be analyzed.

Effects of Soil Hardness on the Root Distribution of Pinus rigida Mill. Planted in Association with Sodding Works on the Denuded Land (사방시공지(砂防施工地)에 있어서 리기다소나무의 수근(樹根)의 분포(分布)에 미치는 토양견밀도(土壤堅密度)의 영향(影響))

  • Cho, Hi Doo
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.56 no.1
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    • pp.66-76
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    • 1982
  • Soil harness represents such physical properties as porosity, amount of water, bulk density and soil texture. It is very important to know the mechanical properties of soil as well as the chemical in order to research the fundamental phenomena in the growth and the distribution of tree roots. The writer intended to grip soil hardness by soil layer and also to grasp the root distribution and the correlation between soil hardness and the root distribution of Pinus riguda Mill. planted on the denuded hillside with sooding works by soil layer on soil profile. The site investigated is situated at Peongchang-ri 13, Kocksung county, Chon-nam Province. The area is consisted of 3.63 ha having on elevation of 167.5-207.5 m. Soil texture is sandy loam and parant rock in granite. Average slope of the area is $17^{\circ}-30^{\circ}$. Soil moisture condition is dry. Main exposure of the area is NW or SW. The total number of plots investigated was 24 plots. It divided into two groups by direction each 12 plots in NW and SW and divided into three groups by the position of mountain plots in foot of mountain, in hillside, and in summit of mountain, respectively. Each sampling tree was selected as specimen by purposive sampling and soil profile was made at the downward distance of 50cm form the sampling tree at each plot. Soil hardness, soil layer surveying, root distribution of the tree and vegetation were measured and investigated at the each plot. The soil hardness measured by the Yamanaka Soil Hardness Tester in mm unit. the results are as follows: 1) Soil hardness increases gradually in conformity with the increment of soil depth. The average soil indicator hardness by soil layer are as follows: 14.6mm in I - soil layer (0-10cm in depth from soil surface), 16.2mm in II - soil layer (10-20cm), 17.2 in III - soil layer (20-30cm), 18.3mm in IV - soil layer(30-40cm), 19.8mm in V - soil layer (4.50mm). 2) The tree roots (less than 20mm in diameter) distribute more in the surface layer than in the subsoil layer and decrease gradually according to the increment of soil depth. The ratio of the root distribution can be illustrated by comparing with each of five soil layers from surface to subsoil layer as follows: I - soil layer; 31%, II - soil layer; 26%, III - soil layer; 18%, IV - soil layer; 12%, V - soil layer; 13%, 3) Soil hardness and tree root distribution (less than 20mm in diameter) of Pinus rigida Mill. correlate negatively each other; the more soil hardness increases, the most root distribution decreases. The correlation coefficients between soil hardness and distribution of tree roots by soil layer are as follows: I - soil layer; -0.3675 (at the 10% significance level), II - soil layer; -0.5299 (at the 1% significance level), III - soil layer; -0.5573 (at the 2% significance level), IV - soil layer; -0.6922 (at the 5% significance level), V - soil layer; -0.7325 (at the 2% significance level). 4) the most suitable range of soil hardness for the growth of Pinus rigida Mill is the range of 12-14.9mm in soil indicator hardness. In this range of soil indicator hardness, the root distribution of this tree amounts to 41.8% in spite of 33% in soil harness and under the 20.9mm of soil indicator hardness, the distribution amounts to 93.2% in spite of 82% in soil hardness. Judging from above facts, the roots of Pinus rigida can easily grow within the soil condition of 20.9mm in soil indicator hardness. 5) The soil layers are classified by their depths from the surface soil.

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The embryological studies on the interspecific hybrid of ginseng plant (Panax ginseng x P. Quiuquefolium) with special references to the seed abortion (인삼의 종간잡종 Panax ginseng x P Quinquefoilium의 발생학적 연구 특히 결실불능의 원인에 관하여)

  • Jong-Kyu Hwang
    • KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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    • v.5 no.1
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    • pp.69-86
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    • 1969
  • On the growing of the interspecific hybrid ginseng plant, the phenomena of hybrid vigoures are observed in the root, stem, and leaf, but it can not produce seeds favorably since the ovary is abortive in most cases in interspecific hybrid plants. The present investigation was undertaken in an attempt to elucidate the embryological dses of the seed failure in the interspecific hybrid of ginseng (Panax Ginseng ${\times}$ P. Quinque folium). And the results obtained may be summarized as follows. 1). The vegetative growth of the interspecific hybrid ginseng plant is normal or rather vigorous, but the generative growth is extremely obstructed. 2). Even though the generative growth is interrupted the normal development of ovary tissue of flower can be shown until the stage prior to meiosis. 3). The division of the male gameto-genetic cell and the female gameto-genetic cell are exceedingly irregular and some of them are constricted prior to meiosis. 4). At meiosis in the microspore mother cell of the interspecific hybrid, abnormal division is observed in that the univalent chromosome and chromosome bridge occure. And in most cases, metaphasic configuration is principally presented as 23 II+2I, though rarely 22II+4I is also found. 5). Through the process of microspore and pollen formation of F1, the various developmental phases occur even in an anther loclus. 6). Macro, micro and empty pollen grains occur and the functional pollen is very rare. 7). After the megaspore mother cell stage, the rate of ovule development is, on the whole, delayed but the ovary wall enlargement is nearly normal. 8). Degenerating phenomena of ovules occur from the megaspore mother cell stage to 8-nucleate embryo sac stage, and their beginning time of constricting shape is variously different. 9). The megaspore arrangement in the parent is principally of the linear type, though rarely the intermediate type is also observed, whereas various types, viz, linear, intermediate, Tshape, and I shape can be observed in hybrid. 10). After meiosis, three or five megaspore are some times counted. 11). Charazal end megaspore is generally functional in the parents, whereas, in F1, very rarely one of the center megaspores (the second of the third megaspore) grows as an embryo sac mother cell. 12). In accordance with the extent of irregularity or abnormality in meiosis, division of embryo sac nuclei and embryo sac formation cause more nucellus tissue to remain within th, embryo sac. 13). Even if one reached the stage of embryo sac formation, the embryo sac nuclei are always precarious and they can not be disposed to theil proper, respective position. 14). Within the embryo sac, which is lacking the endospermcell, the 4-celled proembryo, linear arrangement, is observed. 15). Through the above respects, the cause of sterile or seed failure of interspecific hybrid would be presumably as follows, By interspecific crossing gene reassortments takes place and the gene system influences the metabolism by the interference of certain enzyme as media. In the F1 plant, the quantity and quality of chemicals produced by the enzyme system and reaction system are entirely different from the case of the parents. Generally, in order to grow, form, and develop naw parts it is necessary to change the materials and energy with reasonable balance, whereas in the F1 plant the metabolic process becomes abnormal or irregular because of the breakdown of the balancing. Thus the changing of the gene-reaction system causes the alteration of the environmental condition of the gameto-genetic cells in the anther and ovule; the produced chemicals cause changes of oxidatio-reduction potential, PH value, protein denaturation and the polarity, etc. Then, the abnormal tissue growing in the ovule and emdryo sac, inhibition of normal development and storage of some chemicals, especially inhibitor, finally lead to sterility or seed failure. Inconclusion, we may presume that the first cause of sterile or seed abortion in interspecific hybrids is the gene reassortment, and the second is the irregularity of the metabolic system, storage of chemicals, especially inhibitor, the growth of abnormal tissue and the change of the polarity etc, and they finally lead to sexual defect, sterility and seed failure.

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MR T2 Map Technique: How to Assess Changes in Cartilage of Patients with Osteoarthritis of the Knee (MR T2 Map 기법을 이용한 슬관절염 환자의 연골 변화 평가)

  • Cho, Jae-Hwan;Park, Cheol-Soo;Lee, Sun-Yeob;Kim, Bo-Hui
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.298-307
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    • 2009
  • By using the MR T2 map technique, this study intends, first, to measure the change of T2 values of cartilage between healthy people and patients with osteoarthritis and, second, to assess the form and the damage of cartilage in the knee-joint, through which this study would consider the utility of the T2 map technique. Thirty healthy people were selected based on their clinical history and current status and another thirty patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who were screened by simple X-ray from November 2007 to December 2008 were selected. Their T2 Spin Echo (SE hereafter) images for the cartilage of the knee joint were collected by using the T2 SE sequence, one of the multi-echo methods (TR: 1,000 ms; TE values: 6.5, 13, 19.5, 26, 32.5. 40, 45.5, 52). Based on these images, the changes in the signal intensity (SI hereafter) for each section of the cartilage of the knee joint were measured, which yielded average values of T2 through the Origin 7.0 Professional (Northampton, MA 01060 USA). With these T2s, the independent samples T-test was performed by SPSS Window version 12.0 to run the quantitative analysis and to test the statistical significance between the healthy group and the patient group. Closely looking at T2 values for each anterior and lateral articular cartilage of the sagittal plane and the coronal plane, in the sagittal plane, the average T2 of the femoral cartilage in the patient group with arthritis of the knee ($42.22{\pm}2.91$) was higher than the average T2 of the healthy group ($36.26{\pm}5.01$). Also, the average T2 of the tibial cartilage in the patient group ($43.83{\pm}1.43$) was higher than the average T2 in the healthy group ($36.45{\pm}3.15$). In the case of the coronal plane, the average T2 of the medial femoral cartilage in the patient group ($45.65{\pm}7.10$) was higher than the healthy group ($36.49{\pm}8.41$) and so did the average T2 of the anterior tibial cartilage (i.e., $44.46{\pm}3.44$ for the patient group vs. $37.61{\pm}1.97$ for the healthy group). As for the lateral femoral cartilage in the coronal plane, the patient group displayed the higher T2 ($43.41{\pm}4.99$) than the healthy group did ($37.64{\pm}4.02$) and this tendency was similar in the lateral tibial cartilage (i.e., $43.78{\pm}8.08$ for the patient group vs. $36.62{\pm}7.81$ for the healthy group). Along with the morphological MR imaging technique previously used, the T2 map technique seems to help patients with cartilage problems, in particular, those with the arthritis of the knee for early diagnosis by quantitatively analyzing the structural and functional changes of the cartilage.

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Categorizing Quality Features of Franchisees: In the case of Korean Food Service Industry (프랜차이즈 매장 품질요인의 속성분류: 국내 외식업을 중심으로)

  • Byun, Sook-Eun;Cho, Eun-Seong
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.16 no.1
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    • pp.95-115
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    • 2011
  • Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

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Memory Organization for a Fuzzy Controller.

  • Jee, K.D.S.;Poluzzi, R.;Russo, B.
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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    • 1993.06a
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    • pp.1041-1043
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    • 1993
  • Fuzzy logic based Control Theory has gained much interest in the industrial world, thanks to its ability to formalize and solve in a very natural way many problems that are very difficult to quantify at an analytical level. This paper shows a solution for treating membership function inside hardware circuits. The proposed hardware structure optimizes the memoried size by using particular form of the vectorial representation. The process of memorizing fuzzy sets, i.e. their membership function, has always been one of the more problematic issues for the hardware implementation, due to the quite large memory space that is needed. To simplify such an implementation, it is commonly [1,2,8,9,10,11] used to limit the membership functions either to those having triangular or trapezoidal shape, or pre-definite shape. These kinds of functions are able to cover a large spectrum of applications with a limited usage of memory, since they can be memorized by specifying very few parameters ( ight, base, critical points, etc.). This however results in a loss of computational power due to computation on the medium points. A solution to this problem is obtained by discretizing the universe of discourse U, i.e. by fixing a finite number of points and memorizing the value of the membership functions on such points [3,10,14,15]. Such a solution provides a satisfying computational speed, a very high precision of definitions and gives the users the opportunity to choose membership functions of any shape. However, a significant memory waste can as well be registered. It is indeed possible that for each of the given fuzzy sets many elements of the universe of discourse have a membership value equal to zero. It has also been noticed that almost in all cases common points among fuzzy sets, i.e. points with non null membership values are very few. More specifically, in many applications, for each element u of U, there exists at most three fuzzy sets for which the membership value is ot null [3,5,6,7,12,13]. Our proposal is based on such hypotheses. Moreover, we use a technique that even though it does not restrict the shapes of membership functions, it reduces strongly the computational time for the membership values and optimizes the function memorization. In figure 1 it is represented a term set whose characteristics are common for fuzzy controllers and to which we will refer in the following. The above term set has a universe of discourse with 128 elements (so to have a good resolution), 8 fuzzy sets that describe the term set, 32 levels of discretization for the membership values. Clearly, the number of bits necessary for the given specifications are 5 for 32 truth levels, 3 for 8 membership functions and 7 for 128 levels of resolution. The memory depth is given by the dimension of the universe of the discourse (128 in our case) and it will be represented by the memory rows. The length of a world of memory is defined by: Length = nem (dm(m)+dm(fm) Where: fm is the maximum number of non null values in every element of the universe of the discourse, dm(m) is the dimension of the values of the membership function m, dm(fm) is the dimension of the word to represent the index of the highest membership function. In our case then Length=24. The memory dimension is therefore 128*24 bits. If we had chosen to memorize all values of the membership functions we would have needed to memorize on each memory row the membership value of each element. Fuzzy sets word dimension is 8*5 bits. Therefore, the dimension of the memory would have been 128*40 bits. Coherently with our hypothesis, in fig. 1 each element of universe of the discourse has a non null membership value on at most three fuzzy sets. Focusing on the elements 32,64,96 of the universe of discourse, they will be memorized as follows: The computation of the rule weights is done by comparing those bits that represent the index of the membership function, with the word of the program memor . The output bus of the Program Memory (μCOD), is given as input a comparator (Combinatory Net). If the index is equal to the bus value then one of the non null weight derives from the rule and it is produced as output, otherwise the output is zero (fig. 2). It is clear, that the memory dimension of the antecedent is in this way reduced since only non null values are memorized. Moreover, the time performance of the system is equivalent to the performance of a system using vectorial memorization of all weights. The dimensioning of the word is influenced by some parameters of the input variable. The most important parameter is the maximum number membership functions (nfm) having a non null value in each element of the universe of discourse. From our study in the field of fuzzy system, we see that typically nfm 3 and there are at most 16 membership function. At any rate, such a value can be increased up to the physical dimensional limit of the antecedent memory. A less important role n the optimization process of the word dimension is played by the number of membership functions defined for each linguistic term. The table below shows the request word dimension as a function of such parameters and compares our proposed method with the method of vectorial memorization[10]. Summing up, the characteristics of our method are: Users are not restricted to membership functions with specific shapes. The number of the fuzzy sets and the resolution of the vertical axis have a very small influence in increasing memory space. Weight computations are done by combinatorial network and therefore the time performance of the system is equivalent to the one of the vectorial method. The number of non null membership values on any element of the universe of discourse is limited. Such a constraint is usually non very restrictive since many controllers obtain a good precision with only three non null weights. The method here briefly described has been adopted by our group in the design of an optimized version of the coprocessor described in [10].

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Yeoheon's Recognition of Geography and the Significance of the Compilation of Geographical Records by His Disciples (여헌(旅軒) 장현광(張顯光)의 지리인식(地理認識)과 문인(門人)들의 지지편찬(地誌編纂) 의의)

  • Choi, Wonsuk
    • (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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    • no.49
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    • pp.73-107
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    • 2012
  • Yeoheon Jang Hyeongwang(1554-1637), one of the greatest Mid-Joseon Confucianists did systematic studies on universe and nature. It can be considered that he inherited the academic tradition of Cho Sik (曺植) and Jeong Gu(鄭逑) and followed their steps of fengshui (風水) and compilation of geographical records. His living and thought and deserve researching with regard to geographical studies. This paper attempts to analyze Yeoheon's recognition of geography in general. In other words, I shall prove that his view of geography is Neo-Confucian. At the same time, I shall discuss how he named people's residence, how he understanded the Joseon territory, what he thought about fengshui, and what significance the complication of geographical records by his disciples had. Yeoheon considered that land is composed of water, fire, earth, and rock, and understanded the land according to the theory of Zhouyi (周易). He analyzed geographic environments by the system of Zhouyi. His study of geography is basically intended for practical use, and as a result is necessary for people to choose where to live and where to cultivate. In his opinion, it is essential to divide the land of the Joseon by means of geographical differences in order to help people to find a better place to live. We can see his Confucian view from the fact that he placed a greater emphasis on human beings over nature. Therefore, the practical use for humans is the first priority in his study of geography. Meanwhile, he considered nature itself as only the object of study. He realized the vitality of life by making a close observation of nature and attained the mind of the Heaven and Earth in a detached way. He, as a follower of Neo-Confucianism, enjoyed the land by feeling comfortable with his present status and by being satisfied with himself. He put his Confucian view of universe and world into practice in his life. As a part of his efforts, he named his residence and surrounding natural environments with the polar star and 28 stars, and accordingly they are reconstructed in a system of universe. The Confucian tradition of dongcheon gugok (洞天九曲) starting with Zhu Xi's administration of wuyi jiugu (武夷九曲) was widely prevalent during the Joseon period, but Yeoheon's system of organizing places is original. His sense of naming places reflects his ideas of following his predecessors, comparing natural objects to human emotions, and desiring to live in retirement. Yeoheon understanded the Joseon territory with comparison of the Chinese land. He expressed his knowledge in the form of changing geographical features of a district, appreciating natural beauty, locating towns, and being familiar with a region, and proposing his own climatology and view of the reality. His recognition of the Joseon territory resolves itself into the following several points. He regarded the Joseon territory as one organism, and considered the territory to be composed of ki (氣) as Neo-Confucianists usually do. In addition, he understanded not only natural environments but also towns from a perspective of the fengshui and adopted a comparative methodology in dividing regions. He also applied climatology to analyze persons and customs. He employed the methodology of fengshui from the comprehensive theory of the Yijing. It is because he was influenced by Cho Sik and Jeng Gu. Yeoheon chose dwelling places for people, or gave advice on several places of his hometown relying on his knowledge of fengshui. When it comes to his theory of fengshui, he agreed with the theory of topography with regards to the fengshui of tombs, but criticized the custom of delaying funerals in order to turn fortune in one's favor. In addition, he accepted that it is necessary to complement a town by creating forests around it. We need to pay attention to the fact that Yeoheon's disciples complied several geographical records. It proves that they inherited the tradition of "valuing practical use and governing on behalf of the people" from Cho Sik and Jeong Gu. Yeoheon put a great emphasis on geographical records and encouraged his disciples to compile them. In other words, he emphasized that they, as administrator or intellectual, need to be erudite in the history and custom of a region where they have lived, and have to establish a standard to encourage or warn people in the region while considering the geographical records. His opinion functioned as a guideline for his successors to compile geographical records later. This paper only analyzed several facts with regard to Yeoheon's knowledge of geography and an academic tradition concerning the study of geography. In the future, I shall discuss how his predecessors and successors understanded geography and how the tradition of compiling geographical records was transferred and developed between them. I believe that this study will contribute to establishing the history of geography, which the Joseon Confucianists researched for a long time but we have not paid an enough attention to until now.