• STI Policy Review
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.106-131
• /
• 2016

The general purpose of this paper is to identify opportunities for and to measure existing collaboration on research and development between institutions from the countries of Asia and Latin America in FEALAC's framework, in the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology and their convergence. The methodological approach includes scientific and technological surveillance and research seeking to identify both the R&D and innovation capacities of the countries as well as the degree of international cooperation between countries of the two regions; case studies and a study of the governance framework of international collaboration in R&D about issues considered global challenges. The study has three main findings. First, nanotechnology, biotechnology and their convergence contribute to solving the problem of contamination by heavy metals affecting most of the countries that are part of FEALAC and to address problems arising from the accelerated rate of energy consumption, which also contributes to environmental damage. In this scenario, important business opportunities arise from the adaptation and development of bio-refinery technologies. Second, the scientific relationship between FEALAC countries, mainly between Asian and Latin American countries, is weak as can be seen in research for articles and patents. But there is plenty of room and potential for improvement. Third, current and upcoming joint R&D programs and projects should be linked both to existing governance structures and to new ones that serve as experiments of STI public policy regarding innovative management of intellectual property and capacity building. Practical implications are included in lessons learned and a set of recommendations involving a couple of proposals. One proposal calls for research and innovation in promising fields for international cooperation. Another proposal creates mechanisms in the governance framework for sharing knowledge, capacity building, and funding.

• Animal Bioscience
• /
• v.35 no.5
• /
• pp.778-788
• /
• 2022

Objective: The objective of the study was to understand and document socio-economic characteristics, production parameters, challenges and management practices used by Fijian households which keep indigenous chickens. Methods: A survey involving 200 households was carried out in coastal and inland communities of Fiji's wet and semi-dry ecoregions. Data on the influence of ecoregion and location of households relative to the sea on management practices, challenges and productivity of indigenous chickens were analyzed using logistic regression and general linear model of SAS software. Results: Irrespective of location relative to the sea and ecoregion, households indicated that they kept indigenous chickens for food and income generation. The Welsummer was the most (p>0.05) preferred breed. Households in the semi-dry inland communities had the largest (p<0.05) flocks compared to those in semi-dry coastal communities and the wet region. Chickens in the semi-dry region performed better (p<0.05) than those in the wet region in terms of number of clutches per year and mature live weight. Predators and feed shortages were the biggest challenges faced by households in all areas. The mongoose was ranked as the most (p>0.05) common predator followed by domestic dogs. Most households in the wet ecoregion's coastal communities housed their chickens at night, whereas communities in semi-dry ecoregion housed their chickens most of the time (p<0.05). In all regions, no households sold their chickens to commercial markets (p>0.05). Households in semi-dry ecoregion were more likely (p>0.05) to sell their chickens at the local market place. Conclusion: The productivity of local chickens in Fiji is low because of feed shortage, predators such as the mongoose and lack of market linkages.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.42-55
• /
• 2023

The combination of blockchain (BC), artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing (QC), and the Internet of Things (IoT) can potentially transform various industries and domains, including healthcare, logistics, and finance. In this paper, we look at the trends and developments in integrating these emerging technologies and the potential benefits and challenges that come with them. We present a conceptual framework for integrating BC, AI, QC, and IoT and discuss the framework's key characteristics and challenges. We also look at the most recent cutting-edge research and developments in integrating these technologies, as well as the key challenges and opportunities that come with them. Our analysis highlights the potential benefits of integrating the technologies and looks to increased security, privacy, and efficiency to provide insights into the future of these technologies.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2024

This article underscores the importance of integrating comprehensive palliative care for noncancer patients who are undergoing hemodialysis, with an emphasis on the aging populations in Asian nations such as Taiwan, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and China. As the global demographic landscape shifts towards an aging society and healthcare continues to advance, a marked increase has been observed in patients undergoing hemodialysis who require palliative care. This necessitates an immediate paradigm shift to incorporate this care, addressing the intricate physical, psychosocial, and spiritual challenges faced by these individuals and their families. Numerous challenges impede the provision of effective palliative care, including difficulties in prognosis, delayed referrals, cultural misconceptions, lack of clinician confidence, and insufficient collaboration among healthcare professionals. The article proposes potential solutions, such as targeted training for clinicians, the use of telemedicine to facilitate shared decision-making, and the introduction of time-limited trials for dialysis to overcome these obstacles. The integration of palliative care into routine renal treatment and the promotion of transparent communication among healthcare professionals represent key strategies to enhance the quality of life and end-of-life care for people on hemodialysis. By embracing innovative strategies and fostering collaboration, healthcare providers can deliver more patient-centered, holistic care that meets the complex needs of seriously ill patients within an aging population undergoing hemodialysis.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.1-36
• /
• 1999

The case of four classrooms analyzed in this study point to many commonalities in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching in Korea and the U. S. In both national contexts we have seen the need fur a clear distinction between implementing new student-centered social practices in the classroom, and providing significant new loaming opportunities for students. In particular, there is an important need to distinguish between attending to the social practices of the classroom and attending to students conceptual development within those social practices. In both countries, teachers in the less successful student-centered classes tended to abdicate responsibility fur sense making to the students. They were more inclined to attend to the literal statements of their students without analyzing their conceptual understanding (Episodes KA5 and UP 2). This is easy to do when the rhetoric of reform emphasizes student-centered social practices without sufficient attention to psychological correlates of those social practices. The more successful teachers tended to monitor the understanding of the students and to take proactive measures to ensure the development of that understanding (Episodes KO5 and UN3). This suggests the usefulness of constructivism as a model (or successful student-centered instruction. As Simon(1995) observed, constructivist teachers envision a hypothetical learning trajectory that constitutes their plan and expectation for students learning from the particular if the trajectory is being followed. If not, the teacher adjusts or supplements the task to obtain a more satisfactory result, or reconsider her or his assumptions concerning the hypothetical learning trajectory. In this way, the teacher acts proactively to try to ensure that students are progressing in their understanding in particular ways. Thus the more successful student-centered teacher of this study can be seen as constructivist in their orientation to student conceptual development, in comparison to the less successful student-centered teachers. It is encumbant on the authors of reform in Korea and the U. S. to make sure that reform is not trivialized, or evaluated only on the surface of classroom practices. The commonalities of the two reform endeavores suggest that Korea and the U. S. have much to share with each other in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching for the new millennium.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.203-216
• /
• 2021

Seeing the elapsed time as a quantity that can be measured is quite challenging for students while making students see it is also challenging for teachers. Tuning on these challenges, this article reports on what learning opportunities elementary teachers provide when they teach elapsed time focusing on quantitative objectification. I observed three mathematics classrooms where the elapsed time was taught by three elementary teachers and did a narrative analysis on the instructions. All three teachers utilized certain tools to support students access to the elapsed time as a quantity. They appropriated various quantitative attributes of the tool. In the case of the analog clock, one teacher tried to quantification the elapsed time with the number of minute hand's turning, while the other teacher indicated the distance of minute hand's moving. One teacher represented the elapsed time with the longitudinal attribute of the time band. Standing on the findings, the didactical implications of various attempts for quantitative objectification of the elapsed time implemented were discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.1-12
• /
• 2005

This paper describes the area of intelligent systems research as funded by the Civil and Mechanical Systems (CMS) Division of the National Science Foundation (NSF). With developments in computer science, information technology, sensing and control the design of typical machines and structures by civil and mechanical engineers is evolving toward intelligent systems that can sense, decide and act. This trend toward electro-mechanical design is well-established in modern machines (e.g. vehicles, robots, disk drives) and often referred to as mechatronics. More recently intelligent systems design is becoming an important aspect of structures, such as buildings and bridges. We briefly review recent developments in structural control, including the role that NSF has played in their development, and discuss on-going CMS activities in this area. In particular, we highlight the interdisciplinary initiative on Sensors and Sensor Networks and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). NEES is a distributed cyberinfrastructure to support earthquake engineering research, and provides the pioneering NEES grid computing environment for simulation, teleoperation, data collection and archiving, etc.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.498-512
• /
• 2023

The traditional newspaper industry faces the opportunities and challenges of industry transformation and integration with new media. Consequently, the catalogs of newspapers and magazines are also updated. In this study, necessary information on catalogs was obtained and used to analyze the overall development trend of the newspaper industry. A word frequency analysis was then performed on the introduction and product categories of the catalogs, and the content and types of newspapers and magazines were examined. Furthermore, related factors such as price, number of pages, publishing frequency, and best-selling status were analyzed; the correlation among factors affecting best-selling status was also explored. Subsequently, each element and a combination of elements were used to generate a dataset, build three classification models, and analyze the accuracy of predictions of whether newspapers sold well under other circumstances. The experimental results showed that price is the most critical factor affecting the best-selling status of newspapers and magazines. Publishing frequency and the number of pages were also found to be significant indicators that impact people's subscription choices. Finally, a competitive strategy regarding content, price, quality, and positioning was developed.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.49-81
• /
• 2023

South Korea is currently facing many changes and challenges. To make matters worse, society has struggled to function as it did before COVID-19. This study describes the past and current COVID-19 situation to offer lessons on management during and after COVID-19. We provide implications from COVID-19 and the foundation for future disasters by employing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and indigenous administrative conceptual framework on culture, institution, and instrument to add a circumstance perspective. This study used secondary data from prior research and literature. Resolutions for these policy issues are presented using the strength-opportunity (SO), strength-threat (ST), weakness-opportunity (WO), and weakness-threat (WT) strategies. We suggest utilizing instruments that consider diverse societies and preventing the disease with climate change by collaborating with social institutions. We hope these implications and resolutions will provide insights for the future and other countries.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
• /
• 2022.06a
• /
• pp.363-364
• /
• 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic had substantial negative impacts and caused several disruptions to the global supply chain of the shipping industry. The key challenges identified in terms of maritime manpower are the Certificates of Competency (CoC) or the expiration and/or failure to complete refresher and/or revalidation courses, which directly hinder employment retention and lost opportunities at sea. To tackle this issue directly and swiftly, the creation of the APEC SEN Distance Learning Platform was suggested and approved by APEC as part of an official project. This paper introduces the APEC-wide accessible distance learning platform with the following key topics: the organisation and operation of the platform, the themes and content to be prioritised, the process of education, training, certification, and the ways to promote accreditation, mutual recognition on CoC, education and training videos by taking collaborative actions, and the development of content.