• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.121-145
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• 2019

This paper investigates the relationship between the oil price and the major petroleum products prices at the trading hubs such as Singapore, North West Europe and the US New York Harbor. We focus on the lead-lag relationship between the weekly petroleum prices from 2009 to 2016 based on the vector error correction model. We find that the oil price leads the prices of petroleum products in the long term, while there is bidirectional causality in the short term. On the other hand, prices of petroleum products in regions with high import dependency, such as Europe gas oil and jet fuel price, are exogenous in the long term. We also present evidence that prices of petroleum products in region with a large global-market share lead prices in other regions. However, if the region is in an over-production situation and low industry concentration, it may lose its price leadership due to intense competition. The result in this study can provide a useful information to petroleum refining companies in forecasting fluctuations of product price, and hence in planning their regional arbitrage trading activities.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.326-334
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• 2022

In this paper, we propose speech enhancement algorithm as a pre-processing for robust speech recognition in noisy environments. Auxiliary-function-based Independent Vector Analysis (AuxIVA) is performed with weighted covariance matrix using time-varying variances with scaling factor from target masks representing time-frequency contributions of target speech. The mask estimates can be obtained using Neural Network (NN) pre-trained for speech extraction or diffuseness using Coherence-to-Diffuse power Ratio (CDR) to find the direct sounds component of a target speech. In addition, outputs for omni-directional noise are closely chained by sharing the time-varying variances similarly to independent subspace analysis or IVA. The speech extraction method based on AuxIVA is also performed in Independent Low-Rank Matrix Analysis (ILRMA) framework by extending the Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) for noise outputs to Non-negative Tensor Factorization (NTF) to maintain the inter-channel dependency in noise output channels. Experimental results on the CHiME-4 datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented algorithms.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.313-343
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• 2010

The aim of this study is to examine the factors influencing network centrality on women's welfare organizations, and to investigate how the level of network centrality influence the effectiveness of the organization. To achieve this goal, this study conducted a survey on women's welfare organizations in Seoul from March to June, 2009. Network analysis method was used to get each organization's network centrality value. Also, through the Structural Equation Modelling, organizational characteristics predicting network centrality and effect of network centrality on organizational effectiveness. The main results are as follows. First, the significant affecting factors were different between three types of centralities with regards to the type of organization, recognition of resource dependency, attitude of top manager, and established year. Second, the common factors affecting three network centralities were the number of informal ties, accepting feminism as the main organizational philosophy, and the number of qualified staffs. Third, only closeness centrality positively predicted the level of organizational effectiveness among three types of centralities. The faster the organization reaches to other organizations in a network, the organizational effectiveness becomes higher, which means high closeness centrality is more important factor than high degree centrality or high betweenness centrality to increase organizational effectiveness. This result shows social welfare organization should consider changing inter-organizational network strategy from quantity-focused to quality-focused.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.149-160
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• 2007

KoFlux Gwangneung Supersite comprises complex topography and diverse vegetation types (and structures), which necessitate complementary multi-disciplinary measurements to understand energy and matter exchange. Here, we report the results of this ongoing research with special focuses on carbon/water budgets in Gwangneung forest, implications of inter-dependency between water and carbon cycles, and the importance of hydrology in carbon cycling under monsoon climate. Comprehensive biometric and chamber measurements indicated the mean annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) of this forest to be ${\sim}2.6\;t\;C\;ha^{-1}y^{-1}$. In conjunction with the tower flux measurement, the preliminary carbon budget suggests the Gwangneung forest to be an important sink for atmospheric $CO_2$. The catchment scale water budget indicated that $30\sim40%$ of annual precipitation was apportioned to evapotranspiration (ET). The growing season average of the water use efficiency (WUE), determined from leaf carbon isotope ratios of representative tree species, was about $12{\mu}mol\;CO_2/mmol\;H_2O$ with noticeable seasonal variations. Such information on ET and WUE can be used to constrain the catchment scale carbon uptake. Inter-annual variations in tree ring growth and soil respiration rates correlated with the magnitude and the pattern of precipitation during the growing season, which requires further investigation of the effect of a monsoon climate on the catchment carbon cycle. Additionally, we examine whether structural and functional units exist in this catchment by characterizing the spatial heterogeneity of the study site, which will provide the linkage between different spatial and temporal scale measurements.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.115-134
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• 1997

We now live in the new era of globalization which implies the functional integration or increase of inter-dependency between internationally dispersed economic activities. As globalization impacts our various activities and daily lives, social sciences, including, geography, attempt to approach social phenomena from a global perspective. From this point of view. new regional geography, which has been articulated in recent social theory since the 1980s, also must adjust to these new world realities. This paper aims to search for a suitable methodology or approach to area study or regional geography in the era of globalization and to suggest the field of area study that Korean geographers should be concerned with in the future. This paper has reviewed the existing various methodologies of regional geography such as the ecological approach, the landscape approach. the areal differentiation approach, the system approach, the structuration theory, the spatial division of labour, and the world-system, which have deviced in the traditional and new regional geography. Peter Taylor's regional geography of world systems among them has an appropriate rationale of area study in the globalization era, because world-systems theory explains well globalization. However the regional geography of world-systems must be revised to become more suitable to the area-study approach in the globalization era. Firstly, the regional geography of world-systems explains that regions(historical regions) are made by general mechanisms of the capitalist world-economy that operate through social, economic, and political agents within regions such as individuals, households, social classes, economic enterprises, states, political movements, and many other organizations. But these mechanisms can also act through other regional agents of geographical location, natural conditions, and cultural characteristics. Therefore, the generating process of regions needs to be explained by locational, natural, and cultural elements in addition to social, economic, and political elements within regions. Secondly, Taylor's world-systems approach does not express composite characteristics of regions, because it focuses on the economic characteristics or position of regions within the world-economy. Regions incorporated into world-economy systems are not only changed economically, but also changed spatially, socially, culturally, and politically. Hence the world-systems approach must try to analyze these composite characteristics and their change of regions. Thirdly, The world-system approach proposed that the geography of regions within world-systems could be divided and analyzed as three regional types at the geographical scale such as international regions, state regions, and intra-state regions. However such a regionalization is usually not identified distinctly, because the geographical range of regions in world-systems shaped by economic boundaries of the general mechanisms of the world-economy is fluid and also occasionally overlaps with other political regions. Hence I propose that the world-systems approach should choose political boundaries of states and local autonomies in addition to economic boundaries for objective regionalization and systematic areal study. The revised regional geography of world-systems that I have suggested in this paper can be more effectively and properly applied to regional geography or area study in the globalization era. Globalization intensifies competition between states and also between local autonomies in the world. Therefore we must make efforts to study such areas or regions through the revised regional geography of world-system.