• Title/Summary/Keyword: Information Systems Success

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A Study on the Intelligent Quick Response System for Fast Fashion(IQRS-FF) (패스트 패션을 위한 지능형 신속대응시스템(IQRS-FF)에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Hyun-Sung;Park, Kwang-Ho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.163-179
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    • 2010
  • Recentlythe concept of fast fashion is drawing attention as customer needs are diversified and supply lead time is getting shorter in fashion industry. It is emphasized as one of the critical success factors in the fashion industry how quickly and efficiently to satisfy the customer needs as the competition has intensified. Because the fast fashion is inherently susceptible to trend, it is very important for fashion retailers to make quick decisions regarding items to launch, quantity based on demand prediction, and the time to respond. Also the planning decisions must be executed through the business processes of procurement, production, and logistics in real time. In order to adapt to this trend, the fashion industry urgently needs supports from intelligent quick response(QR) system. However, the traditional functions of QR systems have not been able to completely satisfy such demands of the fast fashion industry. This paper proposes an intelligent quick response system for the fast fashion(IQRS-FF). Presented are models for QR process, QR principles and execution, and QR quantity and timing computation. IQRS-FF models support the decision makers by providing useful information with automated and rule-based algorithms. If the predefined conditions of a rule are satisfied, the actions defined in the rule are automatically taken or informed to the decision makers. In IQRS-FF, QRdecisions are made in two stages: pre-season and in-season. In pre-season, firstly master demand prediction is performed based on the macro level analysis such as local and global economy, fashion trends and competitors. The prediction proceeds to the master production and procurement planning. Checking availability and delivery of materials for production, decision makers must make reservations or request procurements. For the outsourcing materials, they must check the availability and capacity of partners. By the master plans, the performance of the QR during the in-season is greatly enhanced and the decision to select the QR items is made fully considering the availability of materials in warehouse as well as partners' capacity. During in-season, the decision makers must find the right time to QR as the actual sales occur in stores. Then they are to decide items to QRbased not only on the qualitative criteria such as opinions from sales persons but also on the quantitative criteria such as sales volume, the recent sales trend, inventory level, the remaining period, the forecast for the remaining period, and competitors' performance. To calculate QR quantity in IQRS-FF, two calculation methods are designed: QR Index based calculation and attribute similarity based calculation using demographic cluster. In the early period of a new season, the attribute similarity based QR amount calculation is better used because there are not enough historical sales data. By analyzing sales trends of the categories or items that have similar attributes, QR quantity can be computed. On the other hand, in case of having enough information to analyze the sales trends or forecasting, the QR Index based calculation method can be used. Having defined the models for decision making for QR, we design KPIs(Key Performance Indicators) to test the reliability of the models in critical decision makings: the difference of sales volumebetween QR items and non-QR items; the accuracy rate of QR the lead-time spent on QR decision-making. To verify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed models, a case study has been performed for a representative fashion company which recently developed and launched the IQRS-FF. The case study shows that the average sales rateof QR items increased by 15%, the differences in sales rate between QR items and non-QR items increased by 10%, the QR accuracy was 70%, the lead time for QR dramatically decreased from 120 hours to 8 hours.

The Classification System and Information Service for Establishing a National Collaborative R&D Strategy in Infectious Diseases: Focusing on the Classification Model for Overseas Coronavirus R&D Projects (국가 감염병 공동R&D전략 수립을 위한 분류체계 및 정보서비스에 대한 연구: 해외 코로나바이러스 R&D과제의 분류모델을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Doyeon;Lee, Jae-Seong;Jun, Seung-pyo;Kim, Keun-Hwan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.26 no.3
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    • pp.127-147
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    • 2020
  • The world is suffering from numerous human and economic losses due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). The Korean government established a strategy to overcome the national infectious disease crisis through research and development. It is difficult to find distinctive features and changes in a specific R&D field when using the existing technical classification or science and technology standard classification. Recently, a few studies have been conducted to establish a classification system to provide information about the investment research areas of infectious diseases in Korea through a comparative analysis of Korea government-funded research projects. However, these studies did not provide the necessary information for establishing cooperative research strategies among countries in the infectious diseases, which is required as an execution plan to achieve the goals of national health security and fostering new growth industries. Therefore, it is inevitable to study information services based on the classification system and classification model for establishing a national collaborative R&D strategy. Seven classification - Diagnosis_biomarker, Drug_discovery, Epidemiology, Evaluation_validation, Mechanism_signaling pathway, Prediction, and Vaccine_therapeutic antibody - systems were derived through reviewing infectious diseases-related national-funded research projects of South Korea. A classification system model was trained by combining Scopus data with a bidirectional RNN model. The classification performance of the final model secured robustness with an accuracy of over 90%. In order to conduct the empirical study, an infectious disease classification system was applied to the coronavirus-related research and development projects of major countries such as the STAR Metrics (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) of the United States(US), the CORDIS (Community Research & Development Information Service)of the European Union(EU), and the KAKEN (Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) of Japan. It can be seen that the research and development trends of infectious diseases (coronavirus) in major countries are mostly concentrated in the prediction that deals with predicting success for clinical trials at the new drug development stage or predicting toxicity that causes side effects. The intriguing result is that for all of these nations, the portion of national investment in the vaccine_therapeutic antibody, which is recognized as an area of research and development aimed at the development of vaccines and treatments, was also very small (5.1%). It indirectly explained the reason of the poor development of vaccines and treatments. Based on the result of examining the investment status of coronavirus-related research projects through comparative analysis by country, it was found that the US and Japan are relatively evenly investing in all infectious diseases-related research areas, while Europe has relatively large investments in specific research areas such as diagnosis_biomarker. Moreover, the information on major coronavirus-related research organizations in major countries was provided by the classification system, thereby allowing establishing an international collaborative R&D projects.

A Study on the Job Productivity by the Smart Work Investment - Focused on the Organizational Change Resistance and the Communication - (스마트워크 투자에 따른 직무 생산성에 관한 연구 - 조직 변화저항과 의사소통을 중심으로-)

  • Jung, Byoung-Ho
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.37 no.3
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    • pp.83-113
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this study to empirically examine a smart work investment and job performance by change resistance. Firstly, There investigates mediating role of the communication between the smart work investment and the job performance. Secondly, It will identify the job productivity differences through a level of organizational change resistance that reduced smart work investment. The smart work is to provide the flexibility of time and location and is a working method to improve a work productivity of organization members. The introduction of smart work means the adoption of new organizational culture, institution and technology and requires a novel change of a custom and pattern on existing organization culture and institution because of transformation form of communication and collaboration. The method of this study adopts a structural equation model to test a mediating effect of communication and a moderating effect of change resistance level. This model confirms whether smart work investments provide a positive impact on communication and organizational productivity. In addition, I will classify a change resistance level of smart work by cluster analysis and then check a critical path difference of job productivity between each group. As a result, The organizational IT, institution and culture on the smart work investment appeared to important influencers in communication and also had a direct influence of individual performance. Also, The three independent variables of smart work investment have an indirect influence of individual and organizational performance through communication mediating variables. However, the organizational IT and institution as independent variables do not provide direct influence of organization performance. Nevertheless, two independent variables of organizational IT and institution have an indirect influence the organization performance through communication mediating variables. As a result of confirming a productivity of three groups on organization resistance, there was a difference the individual and organizational performance among groups. The low-level group of organizational resistance showed high coefficient value of performance compared to other groups. The group analysis implications, The smart work investment appeared significantly to revise the institution first, build culture secondly and advanced technology lastly. The theoretical implication from this study contributes an extension of social science theory through socio-technical systems, institution, culture, change resistance and job performance based on smart work. The practical implications explain the smart work success in step-by-step investment rather than radical investment as level management of change resistance. In future research, the smart work performance between private and public firms will analyze a difference of the organizational culture, institution, technology and performance.

A study on the Success Factors and Strategy of Information Technology Investment Based on Intelligent Economic Simulation Modeling (지능형 시뮬레이션 모형을 기반으로 한 정보기술 투자 성과 요인 및 전략 도출에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.35-55
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    • 2013
  • Information technology is a critical resource necessary for any company hoping to support and realize its strategic goals, which contribute to growth promotion and sustainable development. The selection of information technology and its strategic use are imperative for the enhanced performance of every aspect of company management, leading a wide range of companies to have invested continuously in information technology. Despite researchers, managers, and policy makers' keen interest in how information technology contributes to organizational performance, there is uncertainty and debate about the result of information technology investment. In other words, researchers and managers cannot easily identify the independent factors that can impact the investment performance of information technology. This is mainly owing to the fact that many factors, ranging from the internal components of a company, strategies, and external customers, are interconnected with the investment performance of information technology. Using an agent-based simulation technique, this research extracts factors expected to affect investment performance on information technology, simplifies the analyses of their relationship with economic modeling, and examines the performance dependent on changes in the factors. In terms of economic modeling, I expand the model that highlights the way in which product quality moderates the relationship between information technology investments and economic performance (Thatcher and Pingry, 2004) by considering the cost of information technology investment and the demand creation resulting from product quality enhancement. For quality enhancement and its consequences for demand creation, I apply the concept of information quality and decision-maker quality (Raghunathan, 1999). This concept implies that the investment on information technology improves the quality of information, which, in turn, improves decision quality and performance, thus enhancing the level of product or service quality. Additionally, I consider the effect of word of mouth among consumers, which creates new demand for a product or service through the information diffusion effect. This demand creation is analyzed with an agent-based simulation model that is widely used for network analyses. Results show that the investment on information technology enhances the quality of a company's product or service, which indirectly affects the economic performance of that company, particularly with regard to factors such as consumer surplus, company profit, and company productivity. Specifically, when a company makes its initial investment in information technology, the resultant increase in the quality of a company's product or service immediately has a positive effect on consumer surplus, but the investment cost has a negative effect on company productivity and profit. As time goes by, the enhancement of the quality of that company's product or service creates new consumer demand through the information diffusion effect. Finally, the new demand positively affects the company's profit and productivity. In terms of the investment strategy for information technology, this study's results also reveal that the selection of information technology needs to be based on analysis of service and the network effect of customers, and demonstrate that information technology implementation should fit into the company's business strategy. Specifically, if a company seeks the short-term enhancement of company performance, it needs to have a one-shot strategy (making a large investment at one time). On the other hand, if a company seeks a long-term sustainable profit structure, it needs to have a split strategy (making several small investments at different times). The findings from this study make several contributions to the literature. In terms of methodology, the study integrates both economic modeling and simulation technique in order to overcome the limitations of each methodology. It also indicates the mediating effect of product quality on the relationship between information technology and the performance of a company. Finally, it analyzes the effect of information technology investment strategies and information diffusion among consumers on the investment performance of information technology.

The Reinforcing Mechanism of Sustaining Participations in Open Source Software Developers: Based on Social Identity Theory and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Theory (오픈 소스 개발자들의 참여 의도 강화 기제 및 참여 지속 의도에 관한 연구: 사회 정체성 이론과 조직시민행동 이론에 기반하여)

  • Choi, Junghong;Choi, Joohee;Lee, Hye Sun;Hwangbo, Hwan;Lee, Inseong;Kim, Jinwoo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.1-23
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    • 2013
  • Open Source Software Development (OSSD) differentiates itself from traditional closed software development in that it reveals its source codes online and allows anyone to participate in projects. Even though its success was in doubt, many of the open collaborative working models produced successful results. Academia started to get interested in how developers are willing to participate even when there are no extrinsic rewards for their efforts. Many studies tried to explain developers' motivations, and the pursuit of ideology, reputation, and altruism are found to be the answers. Those studies, however, focused mostly on how the first contribution is made out of a certain motivation. Nowadays, OSSD reaches at its maturity and 70% of professional developers have used or utilized open source software or code in their works. As the proportion of people experiencing OSS, the accounts from previous studies are expected to be weakened. Also, extant literature fails to explain how the motivation of participating in OSS evolves over time and experiences. Given that changing over time or over experiences is the natural in the perception of motivation, studies in an attempt to understand how the motivation changes or evolves are in need. In this study, we aimed to explain how the perception about OSS from past usage or related experiences leads to the intention to sustain OSS participations. By doing so, we try to bridge the gap between previous studies and the actual phenomenon. We argued that perceived instrumentality about OSS learned from past experiences will first affect the formation of organizational identity towards general OSS community. And once the organizational identity is formed, it will affect the one's following behaviors related to OSS development, most likely to sustain the favoring stance toward OSS community. Our research distinguishes itself from previous one in that it divides the paths from organizational identity formed to the intention to sustain the voluntary helping behaviors, by altruistic and conforming intentions. Drawing on this structural model, we could explain how organizational identity engages in forming the sustaining intention from past experiences, and that the intention to help at individual level and organizational level works at different level in OSS community. We grounded our arguments on Social identity theory and Organizational Citizenship theory. We examined our assumption by constructing a structural equation model (SEM) and had 88 developers to answer our online surveys. The result is analyzed by PLS (partial least square) method. Consequently, all paths but one in our model are supported, the one which assumed the association between perceived instrumentality and altruistic intention. Our results provide directions in designing online collaborative platforms where open access collaboration is meant to occur. Theoretically, our study suggests that organizational citizenship behavior can occur from organizational identity, even in bottom-up organizational settings. More specifically, we also argue to consider both organizational level and individual level of motivation in inducing sustained participations within the platforms. Our result can be interpreted to indicate the importance of forming organizational identity in sustaining the participatory behaviors. It is because there was no direct association between perceived instrumentality from past experiences and altruistic behavior, but the perception of organizational identity bridges the two constructs. This means that people with no organizational identity can sustain their participations through conforming intention from only the perception of instrumentality, but it needs little more than that for the people to feel the intention to directly help someone in the community-first to form the self-identity as a member of the given community.

Revisiting the cause of unemployment problem in Korea's labor market: The job seeker's interests-based topic analysis (취업준비생 토픽 분석을 통한 취업난 원인의 재탐색)

  • Kim, Jung-Su;Lee, Suk-Jun
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.35 no.1
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    • pp.85-116
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    • 2016
  • The present study aims to explore the causes of employment difficulty on the basis of job applicant's interest from P-E (person-environment) fit perspective. Our approach relied on a textual analytic method to reveal insights from their situational interests in a job search during the change of labor market. Thus, to investigate the type of major interests and psychological responses, user-generated texts in a social community were collected for analysis between January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2015 by crawling the online-community in regard to job seeking and sharing information and opinions. The results of topic analysis indicated user's primary interests were divided into four types: perception of vocation expectation, employment pre-preparation behaviors, perception of labor market, and job-seeking stress. Specially, job applicants put mainly concerns of monetary reward and a form of employment, rather than their work values or career exploration, thus youth job applicants expressed their psychological responses using contextualized language (e.g., slang, vulgarisms) for projecting their unstable state under uncertainty in response to environmental changes. Additionally, they have perceived activities in the restricted preparation (e.g., certification, English exam) as determinant factors for success in employment and suffered form job-seeking stress. On the basis of these findings, current unemployment matters are totally attributed to the absence of pursing the value of vocation and job in individuals, organizations, and society. Concretely, job seekers are preoccupied with occupational prestige in social aspect and have undecided vocational value. On the other hand, most companies have no perception of the importance of human resources and have overlooked the needs for proper work environment development in respect of stimulating individual motivation. The attempt in this study to reinterpret the effect of environment as for classifying job applicant's interests in reference to linguistic and psychological theories not only helps conduct a more comprehensive meaning for understanding social matters, but guides new directions for future research on job applicant's psychological factors (e.g., attitudes, motivation) using topic analysis.

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The Role of Control Transparency and Outcome Feedback on Security Protection in Online Banking (계좌 이용 과정과 결과의 투명성이 온라인 뱅킹 이용자의 보안 인식에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Un-Kon;Choi, Ji Eun;Lee, Ho Geun
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.14 no.3
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    • pp.75-97
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    • 2012
  • Fostering trusting belief in financial transactions is a challenging task in Internet banking services. Authenticated Certificate had been regarded as an effective method to guarantee the trusting belief for online transactions. However, previous research claimed that this method has some loopholes for such abusers as hackers, who intend to attack the financial accounts of innocent transactors in Internet. Two types of methods have been suggested as alternatives for securing user identification and activity in online financial services. Control transparency uses information over the transaction process to verify and to control the transactions. Outcome feedback, which refers to the specific information about exchange outcomes, provides information over final transaction results. By using these two methods, financial service providers can send signals to involved parties about the robustness of their security mechanisms. These two methods-control transparency and outcome feedback-have been widely used in the IS field to enhance the quality of IS services. In this research, we intend to verify that these two methods can also be used to reduce risks and to increase the security protections in online banking services. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the effects of the control transparency and the outcome feedback on the risk perceptions in Internet banking services. Our assumption is that these two methods-control transparency and outcome feedback-can reduce perceived risks involved with online financial transactions, while increasing perceived trust over financial service providers. These changes in user attitudes can increase the level of user satisfactions, which may lead to the increased user loyalty as well as users' willingness to pay for the financial transactions. Previous research in IS suggested that the increased level of transparency on the process and the result of transactions can enhance the information quality and decision quality of IS users. Transparency helps IS users to acquire the information needed to control the transaction counterpart and thus to complete transaction successfully. It is also argued that transparency can reduce the perceived transaction risks in IS usage. Many IS researchers also argued that the trust can be generated by the institutional mechanisms. Trusting belief refers to the truster's belief for the trustee to have attributes for being beneficial to the truster. Institution-based trust plays an important role to enhance the probability of achieving a successful outcome. When a transactor regards the conditions crucial for the transaction success, he or she considers the condition providers as trustful, and thus eventually trust the others involved with such condition providers. In this process, transparency helps the transactor complete the transaction successfully. Through the investigation of these studies, we expect that the control transparency and outcome feedback can reduce the risk perception on transaction and enhance the trust with the service provider. Based on a theoretical framework of transparency and institution-based trust, we propose and test a research model by evaluating research hypotheses. We have conducted a laboratory experiment in order to validate our research model. Since the transparency artifact(control transparency and outcome feedback) is not yet adopted in online banking services, the general survey method could not be employed to verify our research model. We collected data from 138 experiment subjects who had experiences with online banking services. PLS is used to analyze the experiment data. The measurement model confirms that our data set has appropriate convergent and discriminant validity. The results of testing the structural model indicate that control transparency significantly enhances the trust and significantly reduces the risk perception of online banking users. The result also suggested that the outcome feedback significantly enhances the trust of users. We have found that the reduced risk and the increased trust level significantly improve the level of service satisfaction. The increased satisfaction finally leads to the increased loyalty and willingness to pay for the financial services.

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A Study on the Buyer's Decision Making Models for Introducing Intelligent Online Handmade Services (지능형 온라인 핸드메이드 서비스 도입을 위한 구매자 의사결정모형에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Jong-Won;Yang, Sung-Byung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.119-138
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    • 2016
  • Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

Analysis of Maternal and Neonatal Transport by the 1339 Emergency Medical Information Center in Busan Area (부산 지역 응급의료정보센터를 통한 산모와 신생아 전원에 대한 연구)

  • Kim, Mi-Jin;Lee, Myung-Chul;Yoo, Jae-Ho;Kim, Myo-Jing
    • Neonatal Medicine
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.137-142
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    • 2011
  • Purpose: In relation to perinatal healthcare, medical institutions and resources are limitative and also are in a state of flux due to the therapeutic specialty. We analyzed requests for interhospital transfers received by Busan 1339 Emergency Medical Information Center (EMIC) to grasp the state of perinatal healthcare delivery system. Methods: This study was conducted on the basis of data inputted into the computing system of Busan 1339 EMIC, between January 1 and December 31, 2009. In connection with 378 pregnant women and 136 newborns who were required to transfer, retrospective analyses were made of the success rate of transfer (SR), the number of contacted hospitals, the time required for transfer and the reason of transfer and refusal. Results: In the case of pregnant women, the SR were 65.5%. They came in contact with 2.7 hospitals, and it took 24.4 minutes. As for the reason of transfer, preterm labor accounted for the highest proportion. In the case of newborns, the SR were 71.3%. They came in contact with 2.4 hospitals, and it took 15.6 minutes. The most common reason of transfer were respiratory symptoms. In the reason of refusal with pregnant women and newborn, the lack of medical staff, medical equipments and wards accounted for great. Conclusion: Many pregnant women and newborns have been transferred to hospitals by EMIC, but the SR has not been higher yet. Accordingly, there is a need to evaluate the propriety of perinatal treatment system, as well as to set up effective perinatal healthcare delivery system.

Reproductive Aging in Female Rodents (암컷 설치류에서의 생식 노화)

  • Lee, Sung-Ho
    • Development and Reproduction
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.13-20
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    • 2007
  • In all female mammals, reproductive system is one of the first biological systems to show age-related decline. Female mammals in reproductive aging, though the phenomena is somewhat species-specific, start to show declining fertility and changes of numerous physiological functions. This review will present a current information on the aging of the female reproductive hormonal axis and introduce three useful rodent models for studying this field. Middle age($8{\sim}12$ months old) in female rats and mice is comparable to the stage prior to the entry of menopause in human. In this period pulsatile and surge GnRH secretion from hypothalamus gradually attenuated, then reduced pulsatile and surge LH secretion is followed consequently. This age-related defects in GnRH-LH neuroendocrine axis seem to be highly correlated with the defects in brain signals which modulate the activities of GnRH neuron. Many researchers support the idea which the age-related hypothalamic defects are the main cause of reproductive aging, but some ovarian factors such as inhibin response also could contribute to the induction of reproductive senescence. Some rodent models are quite valuable in studying the reproductive aging. The follitropin receptor knockout(FORKO) mice, both of null and haploinsufficient state, could produce depletion of oocyte/follicle with age. Dioxin/aryl hydrocarbon receptor(AhR) knockout mice also show severe ovarian defects and poor reproductive success early in their life compared to the age-matched normal mice. Further studies on the reproductive aging will be a great help to evaluate the benefits and risks of hormone replacement therapy(HRT) and to improve the safety of HRT.

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