• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.539-551
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• 2017

This study investigated the current status and needs for nutrition education to help reduce children's sugars intake at the Center for Children's Foodservice Management (CCFM, n=115), and Child Care Facilities (CCF, n=646) through an online survey conducted from October $5^{th}$ to $30^{th}$ 2015. A total of 14.8% of CCFM respondents and 31.9% of CCF respondents provided nutrition education on sugars intake to young children as a main topic (p<0.001). A higher percentage (CCFM 47.8%: CCF 42.4%) delivered nutrition education on sugars intake to young children as a sub-component (p<0.001). Over 90% of the CCFM and CCF participants agreed on the necessity of providing nutrition education on sugars intake to children. The most common reasons given for delivering nutrition education on children's sugar intake were "there are many more urgent nutrition education topics" for CCFM, and "insufficient nutrition education information and materials" for CCF. The percentage of nutrition education on children's sugar intake provided to the children's parents was low showing about 20% in the both groups. The percentage of CCFM participants providing nutrition, education on children's sugar intake to the teachers in CCF was also low, showing about 14.8%; however, 68.0% of the CCF participants wanted to received teacher's education on guiding children's sugar intake. Regarding ideas about a nutrition education program on children's sugar intake for young children, most respondents in both groups answered "sugar intake and dental cavities or obesity" for appropriate education contents, "story telling or puppet show" for appropriate education methods, and "dietitian from CCFM and class teacher together" for appropriate educator. For appropriate education time, there was a significantl difference between the CCFM responses (average 2.7 times) and the CCF responses (average 4 times). Based on the above results, we found that implementing nutrition education on children's sugar intake at the CCFM and CCF, was low; however, awareness of the need for nutrition education on children's sugar intake and the program development and supply was very high. Also, the opinions of CCFM and CCF participants about a nutrition education program on children's sugar intake for young children can provide foundation data to develop and implement the CCFM-based nutrition education program.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2011

Over the years Korean health care system has improved in delivery of quality care to the general population for many areas of the health problems. The system is now being recognized in the world as the most cost effective one. It is covered by the uniform national health insurance policy for which most people in Korea are mandatory policy holders. Genetic counseling service, however, which is well recognized as an integral part of clinical genetics service deals with diagnosis and management of genetic condition as well as genetic information presentation and family support, is yet to be delivered in comprehensive way for the patients and families in need. Two major obstacles in providing genetic counseling service in korean health care system are identified; One is the lack of recognition for the need for genetic counseling service as necessary service by the national health insurance. Genetic counseling consumes a significant time in delivery and the current very low-fee schedule for physician service makes it very difficult to provide meaningful service. Second is the critical shortage of qualified professionals in the field of medical genetics and genetic counseling who can provide the service of genetic counseling in clinical setting. However, recognition and understanding of the fact that the scope and role of genetic counseling is expanding in post genomic era of personalized medicine for delivery of quality health care, will lead to the efforts to overcome obstacles in providing genetic counseling service in korean health care system. Only concerted efforts from health care policy makers of government on clinical genetics service and genetic counseling for establishing adequate reimbursement coverage and professional communities for developing educational program and certification process for professional genetic counselors, are necessary for the delivery of much needed clinical genetic counseling service in Korea.

• 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 Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.95-112
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• 2021

In university education, the choice of major class plays an important role in students' careers. However, in line with the changes in the industry, the fields of major subjects by department are diversifying and increasing in number in university education. As a result, students have difficulty to choose and take classes according to their career paths. In general, students choose classes based on experiences such as choices of peers or advice from seniors. This has the advantage of being able to take into account the general situation, but it does not reflect individual tendencies and considerations of existing courses, and has a problem that leads to information inequality that is shared only among specific students. In addition, as non-face-to-face classes have recently been conducted and exchanges between students have decreased, even experience-based decisions have not been made as well. Therefore, this study proposes a recommendation system model that can recommend college major classes suitable for individual characteristics based on data rather than experience. The recommendation system recommends information and content (music, movies, books, images, etc.) that a specific user may be interested in. It is already widely used in services where it is important to consider individual tendencies such as YouTube and Facebook, and you can experience it familiarly in providing personalized services in content services such as over-the-top media services (OTT). Classes are also a kind of content consumption in terms of selecting classes suitable for individuals from a set content list. However, unlike other content consumption, it is characterized by a large influence of selection results. For example, in the case of music and movies, it is usually consumed once and the time required to consume content is short. Therefore, the importance of each item is relatively low, and there is no deep concern in selecting. Major classes usually have a long consumption time because they have to be taken for one semester, and each item has a high importance and requires greater caution in choice because it affects many things such as career and graduation requirements depending on the composition of the selected classes. Depending on the unique characteristics of these major classes, the recommendation system in the education field supports decision-making that reflects individual characteristics that are meaningful and cannot be reflected in experience-based decision-making, even though it has a relatively small number of item ranges. This study aims to realize personalized education and enhance students' educational satisfaction by presenting a recommendation model for university major class. In the model study, class history data of undergraduate students at University from 2015 to 2017 were used, and students and their major names were used as metadata. The class history data is implicit feedback data that only indicates whether content is consumed, not reflecting preferences for classes. Therefore, when we derive embedding vectors that characterize students and classes, their expressive power is low. With these issues in mind, this study proposes a Net-NeuMF model that generates vectors of students, classes through network analysis and utilizes them as input values of the model. The model was based on the structure of NeuMF using one-hot vectors, a representative model using data with implicit feedback. The input vectors of the model are generated to represent the characteristic of students and classes through network analysis. To generate a vector representing a student, each student is set to a node and the edge is designed to connect with a weight if the two students take the same class. Similarly, to generate a vector representing the class, each class was set as a node, and the edge connected if any students had taken the classes in common. Thus, we utilize Node2Vec, a representation learning methodology that quantifies the characteristics of each node. For the evaluation of the model, we used four indicators that are mainly utilized by recommendation systems, and experiments were conducted on three different dimensions to analyze the impact of embedding dimensions on the model. The results show better performance on evaluation metrics regardless of dimension than when using one-hot vectors in existing NeuMF structures. Thus, this work contributes to a network of students (users) and classes (items) to increase expressiveness over existing one-hot embeddings, to match the characteristics of each structure that constitutes the model, and to show better performance on various kinds of evaluation metrics compared to existing methodologies.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.75-97
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• 2012

Knowledge residing in the heads of employees has always been regarded as one of the most critical resources within a firm. However, many tries to facilitate knowledge transfer among employees has been unsuccessful because of the motivational and cognitive problems between the knowledge source and the recipient. Social capital, which is defined as "the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit [Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998]," is suggested to resolve these motivational and cognitive problems of knowledge transfer. In Social capital theory, there are two research streams. One insists that social capital strengthens group solidarity and brings up cooperative behaviors among group members, such as voluntary help to colleagues. Therefore, social capital can motivate an expert to transfer his/her knowledge to a colleague in need without any direct reward. The other stream insists that social capital provides an access to various resources that the owner of social capital doesn't possess directly. In knowledge transfer context, an employee with social capital can access and learn much knowledge from his/her colleagues. Therefore, social capital provides benefits to both the knowledge source and the recipient in different ways. However, prior research on knowledge transfer and social capital is mostly limited to either of the research stream of social capital and covered only the knowledge source's or the knowledge recipient's perspective. Social network theory which focuses on the structural dimension of social capital provides clear explanation about the in-depth mechanisms of social capital's two different benefits. 'Strong tie' builds up identification, trust, and emotional attachment between the knowledge source and the recipient; therefore, it motivates the knowledge source to transfer his/her knowledge to the recipient. On the other hand, 'weak tie' easily expands to 'diverse' knowledge sources because it does not take much effort to manage. Therefore, the real value of 'weak tie' comes from the 'diverse network structure,' not the 'weak tie' itself. It implies that the two different perspectives on strength of ties can co-exist. For example, an extroverted employee can manage many 'strong' ties with 'various' colleagues. In this regards, the individual-level structure of one's relationships as well as the dyadic-level relationship should be considered together to provide a holistic view of social capital. In addition, interaction effect between individual-level characteristics and dyadic-level characteristics can be examined, too. Based on these arguments, this study has following research questions. (1) How does the social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient influence knowledge transfer respectively? (2) How does the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient influence knowledge transfer? (3) How does the social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient influence the effect of the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient on knowledge transfer? Based on Social capital theory and Social network theory, a multi-level research model is developed to consider both the individual-level social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient and the dyadic-level strength of relationship between the knowledge source and the recipient. 'Cross-classified random effect model,' one of the multi-level analysis methods, is adopted to analyze the survey responses from 337 R&D employees. The results of analysis provide several findings. First, among three dimensions of the knowledge source's social capital, network centrality (i.e., structural dimension) shows the significant direct effect on knowledge transfer. On the other hand, the knowledge recipient's network centrality is not influential. Instead, it strengthens the influence of the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient on knowledge transfer. It means that the knowledge source's network centrality does not directly increase knowledge transfer. Instead, by providing access to various knowledge sources, the network centrality provides only the context where the strong tie between the knowledge source and the recipient leads to effective knowledge transfer. In short, network centrality has indirect effect on knowledge transfer from the knowledge recipient's perspective, while it has direct effect from the knowledge source's perspective. This is the most important contribution of this research. In addition, contrary to the research hypothesis, company tenure of the knowledge recipient negatively influences knowledge transfer. It means that experienced employees do not look for new knowledge and stick to their own knowledge. This is also an interesting result. One of the possible reasons is the hierarchical culture of Korea, such as a fear of losing face in front of subordinates. In a research methodology perspective, multi-level analysis adopted in this study seems to be very promising in management research area which has a multi-level data structure, such as employee-team-department-company. In addition, social network analysis is also a promising research approach with an exploding availability of online social network data.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.464-471
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to provide information on the labeling of nutritional components on beverages to aid in nutrition education and oral health promotion. The study was conducted to evaluate nutritional effects and risk factors associated with the consumption of different beverages with respect to oral health. A total of 52 products from seven different types of beverages were analyzed for their nutrient content, sugar content, and pH. The sugar content per serving size, based on the nutrition labeling of beverages, was highest for the milk beverages, at 26.6 g, and lowest for the teas, at 13.0 g. According to the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO), beverages should contain less than 10% (50 g) total sugars. Our assessment revealed that total sugars in and carbonated beverages were 53.2% and 50.0% of daily value, respectively. Therefore, the milk and carbonated beverages contained more than 50% sugars per serving size, exceeding the recommendation of WHO. The pH of the beverages, from the most acidic to the least acidic were: carbonated beverages, pH 3.0; fruit and vegetable beverages, pH 3.1; mixed beverages, pH 3.6; fruit and vegetable juices, pH 3.7; teas, pH 4.7; coffees, pH 6.6; and milk beverages, pH 6.8. The intake of acidic and sweetened beverages could potentially cause dental caries and erosion. Therefore, the results of this study could be used by oral health care professionals to counsel their patients by providing relevant information on the possibility of oral disease caused by consumption of commercial beverages.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.89-116
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• 2008

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is regarded as a core technology of ubiquitous computing. Although it has some technical limitations such as technological standardization of RFID tags as well as economical limitations, many companies around the world have already accepted RFID to improve their management efficiency. In this regard, this study is to meet with results that the adoption of RFID technology willbring opportunities that companies' operational process are improved and customer satisfaction is highly strengthened. This research focuses on providing more understanding for building RFID marketing strategy to suppliers who want to sell their RFID products to customers through analyzing purchasing process. The findings are as follows; First, the study shows that buying center members usually take product reliability and precision of technical specification in the case of new-task buying situation while they put their first purchasing priority on prices in the straight rebuy. Second, the finding presents that in new-task buying situation and the straight rebuy purchasing personnel get information about new products through product performance test, organizational engineers, opinions from other companies' purchasing personnel, and checking out samples. Third, this research demonstrates when it comes to purchasing risk in their first purchasing, the persons who are in charge of material purchasing are inclined to be aware of the risk most in technical problems, followed by financial problems and time delay problems in order. And in addition to those risks are mentioned above, once-again-purchasers take the risk like an opportunity loss for better products into consideration. Fourth, the study shows that the role of concerning departments makes no difference in each purchasing stage. Accordingly marketers need to beef up the differentiated strategy to persuade their customers Fifth, the findings of this study demonstrate that purchasing decision making is much influenced by the final users. So suppliers are supposed to perform the most active marketing strategy at the first stage of purchasing through various resources. Finally, the study presents that the suppliers who will have had close relationships with their customers need to give consistent information to them so that their customers can have lower motive in purchasing products from competitors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.847-885
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to develop a web-based internet program for nutritional assessment and diet Prescription by renal diseases. Renal diseases were classified by nephrotic syndrome, renal failure, hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. The system consisted of five parts according to their functions and contents. The first part is to assess the general health status such as body weight, obesity index, basal metabolic rate and total energy requirement by the input of age, sex, height, weight and degree of activity. The second part was designed to investigate dietary history of patient, that is, to find out his inappropriate dietary habit and give him some suggestions for appropriate dietary behavior by investigating his dietary history. This part also offers the diet and nutrition management by personal status with renal disease, and the information for food selection, snacks, convenience foods, dine-out, behavioral modification, cooking methods, food exchange lists and terms. The third part is evaluating their energy and nutrients intake by comparing with recommended dietary allowance for Koreans or standardized data for patient with renal disease. In this part, it is also analyzing energy and nutrients of food consumed by food group and meals, and evaluating the status of nutrient intake. The fort]1 one, a major part of the system, is implementing the diet and menu planning by using food exchange lists. This Part Provides the patient with menus lists and I day menu suitable to his weight, activity and the status of renal disease. The fifth part is providing information on energy and nutrients of foods and drinks, and top 20 foods classified by nutrients. These results are finally displayed as tabular forms and graphical forms on the computer screen.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.34-42
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• 2003

In medical imaging, three-dimensional (3D) display using Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) as a portable file format can give intuitive information more efficiently on the World Wide Web (WWW). The web-based 3D visualization of functional images combined with anatomical images has not studied much in systematic ways. The goal of this study was to achieve a simultaneous observation of 3D anatomic and functional models with planar images on the WWW, providing their locational information in 3D space with a measuring implement using VRML. MRI and ictal-interictal SPECT images were obtained from one epileptic patient. Subtraction ictal SPECT co-registered to MRI (SISCOM) was performed to improve identification of a seizure focus. SISCOM image volumes were held by thresholds above one standard deviation (1-SD) and two standard deviations (2-SD). SISCOM foci and boundaries of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the MRI volume were segmented and rendered to VRML polygonal surfaces by marching cube algorithm. Line profiles of x and y-axis that represent real lengths on an image were acquired and their maximum lengths were the same as 211.67 mm. The real size vs. the rendered VRML surface size was approximately the ratio of 1 to 605.9. A VRML measuring tool was made and merged with previous VRML surfaces. User interface tools were embedded with Java Script routines to display MRI planar images as cross sections of 3D surface models and to set transparencies of 3D surface models. When transparencies of 3D surface models were properly controlled, a fused display of the brain geometry with 3D distributions of focal activated regions provided intuitively spatial correlations among three 3D surface models. The epileptic seizure focus was in the right temporal lobe of the brain. The real position of the seizure focus could be verified by the VRML measuring tool and the anatomy corresponding to the seizure focus could be confirmed by MRI planar images crossing 3D surface models. The VRML application developed in this study may have several advantages. Firstly, 3D fused display and control of anatomic and functional image were achieved on the m. Secondly, the vector analysis of a 3D surface model was defined by the VRML measuring tool based on the real size. Finally, the anatomy corresponding to the seizure focus was intuitively detected by correlations with MRI images. Our web based visualization of 3-D fusion image and its localization will be a help to online research and education in diagnostic radiology, therapeutic radiology, and surgery applications.