• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.160-174
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• 2023

LiDAR plays a key role in autonomous vehicles, and to improve its visibility, it is necessary to improve its performance and the detection objects. Accordingly, this study proposes a shape for traffic safety signs that is advantageous for self-driving vehicles to recognize. Improvement plans are also proposed using a shape-recognition algorithm based on point cloud data collected through LiDAR sensors. For the experiment, a DBSCAN-based road-sign recognition and classification algorithm, which is commonly used in point cloud research, was developed, and a 32ch LiDAR was used in an actual road environment to conduct recognition performance tests for 5 types of road signs. As a result of the study, it was possible to detect a smaller number of point clouds with a regular triangle or rectangular shape that has vertical asymmetry than a square or circle. The results showed a high classification accuracy of 83% or more. In addition, when the size of the square mark was enlarged by 1.5 times, it was possible to classify it as a square despite an increase in the measurement distance. These results are expected to be used to improve dedicated roads and traffic safety facilities for sensors in the future autonomous driving era and to develop new facilities.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.20.1-20.8
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• 2022

Background: Emergent and re-emergent canine tick-borne infections are attracting increasing attention worldwide. The rise in pet ownership and the close relationship between dogs and their owners are the most concerning factors because dogs may act as competent reservoirs for human tick-transmitted infectious agents. Objectives: This study contributes to the epidemiological surveillance of canine tick-transmitted infections with zoonotic risk in the Republic of Korea (ROK) by investigating the seroprevalence of the pathogens, Anaplasma spp., Borrelia burgdorferi, and Ehrlichia canis. Methods: Four hundred and thirty whole blood samples from domestic dogs were collected in seven metropolitan cities and nine provinces in the ROK and tested using SensPERT Ab test kits (VetAll Laboratories^®) to detect seroreactive animals. Results: The seroprevalence rates identified were 9.8% (42/430) for Anaplasma spp., 2.8% (12/430) for B. burgdorferi, and 1.4% (6/430) for E. canis. The risk factors evaluated in this study that could be associated with the development of a humoral immune response, such as sex, age, and history of tick exposure, were similar. There was only one exception for dogs seroreactive to Anaplasma spp., where the risk factor "tick exposure" was statistically significant (p = 0.047). Conclusions: This serological survey exhibited the widespread presence of Anaplasma spp., B. burgdorferi, and E. canis throughout the ROK. Hence, dogs may play a key role as the sentinel animals of multiple zoonotic infectious agents in the country.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of firm resilience, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study aimed to investigate the concept of SME resilience, the role of entrepreneurial orientation in enhancing firm resilience, and the impact of top management networking capability on this relationship. The study defined firm resilience as consisting of adaptation capacity and recovery capacity and conducted a survey of 187 domestic SMEs for empirical verification. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial orientation is a critical factor in enhancing firm resilience. Furthermore, the networking capability of top management may also contribute to firm resilience, but it weakens the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm resilience as a moderating variable. In crisis situations, SMEs tend to rely more strongly on existing networks, rather than engaging in new network to acquire new resources, information, and knowledge, which can hinder their ability to adapt and recover. This study contributes to the further development and understanding of SME resilience, which is essential for enterprises to overcome crises and return to pre-shock levels.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.87-115
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• 2023

This study aims to examine the causal relationships between sales and employment for public technology-based startups. Although there is a limit to statistical generalization due to the poor understanding of the actual conditions of public technology start-up companies, these companies were analyzed by classifying them into high-growth companise, potential growth companies, and other companies. In order to understand the causal relationship, and to estimate the time required to be effective, panel vector autoregression was applied. As a result, the performance creation mechanism was identified as government supoort and private investment was mutually causal with employment, sales did not cause employment, and employment caused sales. In other words, it was found that employment plays an mediator role in public technology based startups' performance mechanism. In addition, private investment had the effect of improving employment and sales in the short time than governments support, and showed that firms with high employment can attract government support and private investment. This study are academically meaningful in that they empirically revealed the process of performance creation, whereas previous studies had only shown whether there was an effect on performance. It also has a policy contribution by suggesting the need for effective policy promotion by considering the 'employment' factor, such as human resource support, as more important.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.5D
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• pp.695-703
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• 2008

China water market has huge potential for increased use of BOT mode and one of the most attractive markets of doing business. However, the current China water BOT market shows that many foreign companies are retreating from the market while Chinese water companies fast growing. From the view no domestic companies have track records in China BOT water market, the research identified twenty market access barriers in terms of construction laws, regulations, BOT-related policy and the recent market situation. These are evaluated based on interview results with 10 professionals direct or indirect having a China water BOT experience. All the factors are found to be highly influential to foreign company's decision on the market participation. Among those, no fixed return policy and low water price, difficulty in water price adjustment and approval, and no government guarantees, all directly related to the project viability and under the control of government, were the most critical factors, implying government's role is the key in increasing the market competition by attracting more foreign participation on the market. In addition, new construction law regulating foreign EPC contractor's construction work, namely Decree 113, and requirement of applying competitive bidding in selecting EPC contractor in a BOT project are also considered signigicant barriers on foreign participation, which contradicts international norm and therefore necessitates an adjustment on current decision process in domestic companies.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2018

Purpose - In franchise system, how to build the relationship between the franchisor and franchisee through influence strategy is very important, because it affects on the long-term orientation like recontract intentions. Thus, this study examines the effect of mandatory influence strategy on relationship satisfaction, relationship trust, and recontract intentions in the context of food-service franchise industry. This study suggests the guidelines on how franchisor uses their influence strategy on franchisee to maintain and increase the recontract intentions. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between mandatory influence strategy, relationship satisfaction, relationship trust, and recontract intentions from the franchisee's perspective. Mandatory influence strategy divide into three sub-dimensions such as request, legalistic plea, threat. In order to test the purposes of this study, research model and hypotheses were developed. Every constructs were measured by multiple items tested and developed in the previous research. Also, the constructs utilized in this research are measured using 7-point scales anchored by "1=strongly disagree" and 7=strongly agree". The data were collected from 496 owner and owner manager franchisees and were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. program. Analysis of frequency was conducted to identify the demographics and general characteristics of the survey subjects. In order to measure the reliability and validity of the measurement tools, confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis were conducted and structural model analysis was conducted to verify the proposed research model. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, this research found that mandatory influence strategy is positively related to relationship satisfaction and relationship trust, but not to recontract intention directly. Second, this research also found that the full mediating role of relationship satisfaction and relationship trust between the mandatory influence strategy and recontract intention. Conclusions - The findings of this research indicate that franchisor should use properly mandatory influence strategy to improve recontract intentions through relationship satisfaction and relationship trust. Due to the nature of food-service franchise industry, which needs high relationship quality, franchisor must manage their franchisee using influence strategy in order to improve satisfaction and trust. If franchisee perceives higher relationship quality, they will show higher intention to recontract. At the end of this paper, limitations and future research directions were suggested.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.7-19
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• 2017

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of model attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention, and examine whether product-model match-up plays a moderating role in the relationship between model attractiveness and brand attitude and purchase intention. The model attractiveness is consist of psychological and physical attractiveness of the model. The authors investigate how product-model match-up influence the strength of the relationship between model attractiveness - brand attitude and purchase intention. The purpose of this is to test whether product-model match-up influence the form and effectiveness of a model attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention and suggest the effective and efficient methods in the model selection strategies to increase advertising effectiveness based on the results of this study. Research design, data, and methodology - The experimental design for this study was the between subject design based on 2 group of the psychological attractiveness(high vs. low) × product-model match-up(high vs low) and 2 group of the physical attractiveness(high vs. low) × product-model match-up(high vs low). And a preliminary investigation was conducted to develop experimental stimuli through manipulation check to enhance the external validity of experimental research. The attractiveness of the model and product-model match-up are independent variables and manipulative variables in presentation of experimental stimuli. The self-administered methode experiment was conducted on 300 subjects in four groups constructed according to the independent variables. Result - The findings provide partial support for a moderator for product-model match-up on the model attractiveness - brand attitude and purchase intention. First, the influence of psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention was shown significant. Also, it was found that the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention according to psychological attractiveness was significantly higher than the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention according to physical attractiveness in additional analysis. Second, the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention were higher when product - model match-up was high in both high and low psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness of the model. However, in the case of psychological attractiveness, the correlation effect with product - model match-up was significant, but in the case of physical attractiveness, it was not significant. Conclusions - The results of this study suggest that the attractiveness factor should be considered in selecting the ad model by verifying the effect of the attractiveness of the model on the advertising effect. In particular, this study has great significance both academically and practically in terms of suggesting such implications that the advertising effect of psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness may be different depending on the product type by additional analysis.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.39-52
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• 2018

Purpose - This study investigates the effect of service quality of coffee shop on store attitude and store loyalty. It demonstrates that the individual's behavior identification level plays a moderating role when the service quality of coffee shop affects store attitude. Conceptually drawing on Brady & Cronin's three-dimensional model of service quality, this study examines the effect of service quality of coffee specialty store on customer's attitudes and loyalty. Also, according to construal level theory, it examines the individual's propensity difference whether the individual's behavior identification level on service quality and store attitude has a moderating effect Research design, data, and methodology - This study used Brady & Cronin's three-dimensional service quality model, and 183 valid cases collected through the questionnaire survey were used for data analyses. For hypothesis testing, regression analysis, multiple regression analysis, and covariance analysis were conducted. Result- As a result of this study, first, it is confirmed that service quality has a positive effect on store attitude toward coffee shop. Second, the difference of an individual's construal level did not have a moderating effect on the influential relationship of service quality on the store attitude of coffee shop. This is because the influence of the service quality is greater than the difference between groups at the construal level. Therefore, there was no moderating influence according to construal level. Third, the store attitude of coffee specialty store has a positive effect on store loyalty. Conclusions - It is confirmed that there is a difference in the effect of service quality and store attitude on general and college students. This suggests that it can be used to establish marketing strategies by segment. And, the college students were found to be more influenced by physical environment quality factor among three dimensions of service quality. Therefore, it is necessary to further improve efforts to raise the level of service quality perception through physical environmental factors such as clean and pleasant environment including the interior of a coffee shop, and internal table arrangement. The empirical study on the moderating effects of customer's tendency of difference is meaningful in the absence of empirical studies.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.39 no.7
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• pp.5-15
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• 2023

The evaluation of passive earth pressure plays a crucial role in the design of earth-retaining structures such as retaining walls and temporary earth-retaining walls to withstand horizontal earth pressure. In the earth pressure theory, active and passive earth pressures represent the earth pressures at the limit state, where the wall displacement reaches the maximum allowed displacement. In the design of earth-retaining structures, the passive earth pressure is considered as the resisting force. In this context, the limit displacement at which passive earth pressure occurs is significantly greater than that associated with the active earth pressure. Therefore, it is irrational to apply this displacement directly to the calculation of passive earth pressure. Instead, it is necessary to consider the mobilized passive earth pressure exerted at the allowable horizontal displacement to evaluate the structural stability. This study proposes an allowable wall displacement, denoted as 0.002 H (where H represents the excavation depth), based on a literature review that focuses on sandy soils. To calculate the mobilized passive earth pressure from the wall displacement, a semi-empirical equation is proposed. By analyzing the obtained data on mobilized passive earth pressure, a reduction factor applicable to Rankine's passive earth pressure is proposed for practical application in sandy soils under different wall movement types.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.574-585
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• 2023

Sarcopenia is a leading cause of increased medical and nursing care costs among the elderly. In Korea, preventive measures for sarcopenia are mostly targeted toward the general elderly population without specific diseases. However, it is also necessary to implement measures for elderly individuals living in nursing homes and hospitals, where the prevalence of sarcopenia is high. Currently, computed tomography and/or magnetic resonance imaging are considered standard diagnostic tools. However, their complexity and time-consuming nature make them unsuitable for clinical use. The exact pathophysiological mechanisms of sarcopenia are unclear, as they involve various molecular biological pathways, including decreased exercise, protein and nutrient intake, changes in testosterone and growth hormone, and inflammation. Sarcopenia symptoms can lead to several diseases, such as osteoporosis, fractures, dementia, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Vitamin B deficiency is a significant factor in sarcopenia induction, with B vitamins being directly involved in energy and protein metabolism and nerve function. Vitamin B deficiency can lead to neuromuscular and neurogenic disorders, which often overlap with sarcopenia. Suboptimal intake of B vitamins, malabsorption, and anorexia are common among the elderly. This study aims to provide information on the role of water-soluble B vitamins in preventing and controlling muscle mass loss and deterioration among the elderly with sarcopenia. In addition, we discuss the potential of myokines from the B vitamin family in modulating sarcopenia.