• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.41-52
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• 2015

Purpose - Given globalization, the new niche market of medical tourism is likely to experience sustainable growth for various reasons, such as aging populations and a shift in the medical consumerism paradigm toward prevention. Importantly, understanding medical customers' behavior is necessary to benefit from a competitive advantage in this industry. The existing research primarily accessed the key factors of medical quality and costs to explain health customers' behavior but is limited in terms of enabling an understanding of the decision process. This limitation exists because, given the intangibility and greater associated risks in the highly professional industry of international medical tourism, most customers lack the knowledge and experience needed to evaluate the central factors-such as the medical competence of health care countries-before purchases. Therefore, they actively search for useful information through various distributions to reduce uncertainty and to make better choices. Interestingly, most of these information channels are associated with word-of-mouth (WOM). However, no evidence is found in the literature to estimate the effect of WOM in the medical tourism field. Thus, this study focuses on WOM to explore its interaction with key medical characteristic factors and the attractiveness of destinations referred to by sources. This study also affects customers' evaluations and, in turn, influences their intention to seek health care services abroad. Research design, data, and methodology - The literature review addressed an interesting research model for estimating the relations among WOM, medical characteristics, attractiveness, and customers' choice intention regarding international health care. In the key economic regions in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Guangdong, 2,500 survey questionnaires were distributed to potential customers of different ages, education, and income levels. A resulting 1,717 (68.68 percent of the original 2,500) usable surveys were obtained for analysis. Moderated regression analysis was used to determine the effects of WOM in the decision process regarding international health care destinations. Results - The results indicate that WOM is a good moderator of the relationships between the factors evaluated by sources and customers. More importantly, the WOM effects reflect the factors of tie strength, credibility, and vividness. The results also reveal that, given the moderating role of WOM, the intention of potential Chinese customers to seek the referred health care country varies according to the medical characteristics of medical competency and reputation as evaluated by customers. In contrast, the travel attractiveness of the attractions, facilities, accessibility, and social environment are critical determinants of destination choice intention. Conclusions - The moderating role of WOM has been confirmed through the international healthcare destination selection process. Medical tourism managers should user WOM as an effective marketing tool for industry development. Specially, marketers should consider the effects of WOM determinants, such as tie strength, credibility, and vividness, to develop an effective strategy. Furthermore, this study estimates the factors that affect customers' selection of medical tourism destinations. Health care managers or policy makers should consider a broad variety of variables that may attract more Chinese customers to international health care.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2002

The development of information and communications technologies(ICT) is changing school education, which is a center of teaching/lession process. Information and communications technologies can not guarantee quality education appropriate for knowledge & information society. Interactions between ICT and educational environment, change in the role of teachers, and shift in teaching strategies for educational contents and learning method would be required. This paper has studied the relationship between school education and ICT, change in the role of teachers, and a direction in teaching strategies to take advantage of ICT in school education. For this purpose, it has endeavored to offer an ideal ICT environment by researching both some cases in the foreign countries and the seventh educational process in Korea. In conclusion, this study recommends the followings; First, interactive environment between school and ICT is necessary to make education appropriate to knowledge-information society; Secondly, in the structutive teaching/learing process based upon ICT classroom, teachers should not be the old role player, such as knowledge transfer and learning manager any longer; instead, they should stimulate more social and conversational thinking, and integrate ICT into teaching process; Thirdly, teaching strategies need to change for the purpose of promoting evaluative thinking productive thinking creative thinking.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.775-785
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the outcome of 'The second plan for identifying and nurturing of science-gifted student' and investigate the implications for the third plan. 'The second plan for identifying and nurturing of science-gifted student' was made for the promotion of science-gifted education from 2013 to 2017. This plan is composed of three strategies with 25 sub-projects: a systematic identification of science-gifted students with potential, an activation of creative and integrated science-gifted education and an establishment of optimized science education supporting system. We supposed six implications through the investigation of the performance analysis of each sub-project. First, the third plan should be composed of projects to be able to be supported directly. Second, the paradigm shift is needed from quantitative expansion to qualitative expansion. Third, third plan should include a special support for profoundly gifted students. Fourth, a specialization plan for science-gifted institute is required. Fifth, it is necessary to establish a camp or residential type gifted institute. Sixth, it is needed to have a quality management of science-gifted programs and MOOC (massive open online course) on science-gifted programs are needed.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.87-96
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the convergence effectiveness of treadmill training in patients with chronic stroke through a meta-analysis. After searching the literature based on the patients, intervention, comparison, outcome criteria, and study desigan, a total of 22 studies related to "stroke" and "treadmill" were eligible for inclusion. Effect size was calculated using the comprehensive meta-analysis program for the meta-analysis. Based on the forest plot results, the overall effect size of treadmill training was 0.661 (95% confidence interval: 0.456-0.865), which was statistically significant with a medium effect size (p < 0.05). The effects of treadmill training on patients with stroke were separated by dependent variables of interest-plantar pressure (1.147), lower limb muscle function (0.875), and balance (0.664). The effect sizes were evaluated for the subdomains of timed up and go test (0.553), Berg Balance Scale (0.760), and static balance index (0.654) for balance. Therefore, treadmill training can be expected to have a positive impact on improving the quality of life of patients with chronic stroke. This meta-analysis of treadmill training may the lead to an industry paradigm shift toward healthcare convergence of information, communication, and medical technology.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.91-102
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• 2014

Recent trends in urban policies show the increasing importance of urban parks. Moreover the park policy and planning are increasingly important for the good urban park system. Comparative studies in the operational system and planning contents of the parks and green space plans of the major cities would be timely and meaningful. This study aims to provide a comparative study in operational system and planning contents of the Parks and Green Space Master Plan at urban scale. Sites include London, New York, Berlin, Sydney and Seoul. Analyses are focused on the master plans and strategy reports of each city. Frameworks for analysis are divided into operational system and planning contents. The results are as follows. First, the Parks and Green Space Plans as an open space planning linked to related resources would contribute to both integrated resources management and practice of the fairness. Second, evolution from quantity to quality of the parks and green space plan enhances revitalization and regeneration. Third, shift from the 'supply oriented plan' to 'need based plan' model provides flexible planning model to meet the demographic change, trend change, preference and use. Fourth, planning agents, enlarged opportunities for participation within each phase, diversified of the participants lead the changes from the passive participation to active one. In order to improve the practicability of the parks and green space master plan, a flexible planning strategy including social awareness changes and park governance is required.

• Strategy21
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• s.44
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• pp.5-27
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• 2018

The purpose of this paper is to look at USN's efforts to rebuild its combat power in the face of a reemergence of great powers competition, and to propose some recommendations for the ROKN. In addition to the plan to augment its fleet towards a 355-ships capacity, the USN is pursuing to improve exponentially combat lethality(quality) of its existing fleet by means of innovative science and technology. In other words, the USN is putting its utmost efforts to improve readiness of current forces, to modernize maintenance facilities such as naval shipyards, and simultaneously to invest in innovative weapons system R&D for the future. After all, the USN seems to pursue innovations in advanced military Science & Technology as the best way to ensure continued supremacy in the coming strategic competition between great powers. However, it is to be seen whether the USN can smoothly continue these efforts to rebuild combat strength vis-a-vis its new competition peers, namely China and Russian navy, due to the stringent fiscal constraints, originating, among others, from the 2011 Budget Control Act effective yet. Then, it seems to be China's unilateral and assertive behaviors to expand its maritime jurisdiction in the South China Sea that drives the USN's rebuild-up efforts of the future. Now, some changes began to be perceived in the basic framework of the hitherto regional maritime security, in the name of declining sea control of the USN as well as withering maritime order based on international law and norms. However, the ROK-US alliance system is the most excellent security mechanism upon which the ROK, as a trading power, depends for its survival and prosperity. In addition, as denuclearization of North Korea seems to take significant time and efforts to accomplish in the years to come, nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence by the US is still noting but indispensible for the security of the ROK. In this connection, the naval cooperation between ROKN and USN should be seen and strengthened as the most important deterrents to North Korean nuclear and missile threats, as well as to potential maritime provocation by neighboring countries. Based on these observations, this paper argues that the ROK Navy should try to expand its own deterrent capability by pursuing selective technological innovation in order to prevent this country's destiny from being dictated by other powers. In doing so, however, it may be too risky for the ROK to pursue the emerging, disruptive innovative technologies such as rail gun, hypersonic weapon... etc., due to enormous budget, time, and very thin chance of success. This paper recommends, therefore, to carefully select and extensively invest on the most cost-effective technological innovations, suitable in the operational environments of the ROK. In particular, this paper stresses the following six areas as most potential naval innovations for the ROK Navy: long range precision strike; air and missile defense at sea; ASW with various unmanned maritime system (UMS) such as USV, UUV based on advanced hydraulic acoustic sensor (Sonar) technology; network; digitalization for the use of AI and big data; and nuclear-powered attack submarines as a strategic deterrent.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.411-419
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• 2004

When the imaging object rotates in image plane during MRI scan, its rotation causes phase error and non-uniform sampling to MRI signal. The model of the problem including phase error non-uniform sampling of MRI signal showed that the MRI signals corrupted by rotations about an arbitrary center and the origin in image plane are different in their phases. Therefore the following methods are presented to improve the quality of the MR image which includes the artifact. The first, assuming that the angle of 2-D rotational motion is already known and the position of 2-D rotational center is unknown, an algorithm to correct the artifact which is based on the phase correction is presented. The second, in case of 2-D rotational motion with unknown rotational center and unknown rotational angle, an algorithm is presented to correct the MRI artifact. At this case, the energy of an ideal MR image is minimum outside the boundary of the imaging object to estimate unknown motion parameters and the measured energy increases when the imaging object has an rotation. By using this property, an evaluation function is defined to estimate unknown values of rotational angle at each phase encoding step. Finally, the effectiveness of this presented techniques is shown by using a phantom image with simulated motion and a real image with 2-D translational shift and rotation.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.2 s.105
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• pp.105-114
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• 2006

In ubiquitous environment where various kinds of computers are embedded in persons, objects and environment and they are interconnected and can be used in my place as necessary, different types of data need to be exchanged between heterogeneous machines through home network. In the environment, the efficient processing, transmission and monitoring of image data are essential technologies. We need to make research not only on traditional image processing such as spatial and visual resolution, color expression and methods of measuring image quality but also on transmission rate on home network that has a limited bandwidth. The present study proposes a new motion vector estimation algorithm for transmitting, processing and controlling image data, which is the core part of contents in home network situation and, using algorithm, implements a real time monitoring system of multi dimensional images transmitted from multiple cameras. Image data of stereo cameras to be transmitted in different environment in angle, distance, etc. are preprocessed through reduction, magnification, shift or correction, and compressed and sent using the proposed metamorphosis hierarchical motion vector estimation algorithm for the correction of motion. The proposed algorithm adopts advantages and complements disadvantages of existing motion vector estimation algorithms such as whole range search, three stage search and hierarchical search, and estimates efficiently the motion of images with high variation of brightness using an atypical small size macro block. The proposed metamorphosis hierarchical motion vector estimation algorithm and implemented image systems can be utilized in various ways in ubiquitous environment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.121-121
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• 2010

ZnO is a promising material for the application of high efficiency light emitting diodes with short wavelength region for its large bandgap energy of 3.37 eV which is similar to GaN (3.39 eV) at room temperature. The large exciton binding energy of 60 meV in ZnO provide provides higher efficiency of emission for optoelectronic device applications. Several ZnO/ZnMgO multiple quantum well (MQW) structures have been grown on various substrates such as sapphire, GaN, Si, and so on. However, the achievement of high quality ZnO/ZnMgO MQW structures has been somehow limited by the use of lattice-mismatched substrates. Therefore, we propose the optical properties of ZnO/ZnMgO multiple quantum well (MQW) structures with different well widths grown on lattice-matched ZnO substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra show MQW emissions at 3.387 and 3.369 eV for the ZnO/ZnMgO MQW samples with well widths of 2 and 5 nm, respectively, due to the quantum confinement effect. Time-resolved PL results show an efficient photo-generated carrier transfer from the barrier to the MQWs, which leads to an increased intensity ratio of the well to barrier emissions for the ZnO/ZnMgO MQW sample with the wider width. From the power-dependent PL spectra, we observed no PL peak shift of MQW emission in both samples, indicating a negligible built-in electric field effect in the ZnO/$Zn_{0.9}Mg_{0.1}O$ MQWs grown on lattice-matched ZnO substrates.

• Journal of Korea Spatial Information System Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.93-106
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• 2008

For agriculture is very highly dependent on climate and weather condistions, global warming seems to have a great impact on it, including its productivity, cultivation condition, product quality, and optimum cultivation location. In this study, we adopted geographical information system (GIS) in order to investigate the changes of Korea's cultivation area which are caused by global warming, especially with the examples of such tropical and sub-tropical fruits as lemon, fig, kiwi, orange, pomegranate, and mandarin. In terms of GIS techniques, we utilized the interpolate function for temperature changes, surface analysis function for slope, and raster calculator. Currently, these fruits's cultivation areas are in Jeju island and southern part of Korea. But these areas will be expanded according as our GIS model assumes $3^{\circ}C$ and $4.5^{\circ}$ increases of average and lowest temperature by the global warming in Korea. Optimum cultivation areas of these six fruits have two patterns; one is expansion and the other is belt shape shift. From the results of the study, we call for an urgent need of Korea government's policy and farmers' reasonable responses about global warming, which will be able to give more opportunities and better foods to Korea society in general.