• Title/Summary/Keyword: Special Means

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A Study on Piracy Matters and Introduction of the Privately Contracted Armed Security Personnel on Board Ships (해적사건 대응을 위한 무장경비원제도 도입방안에 관한 연구)

  • Roh, Ho-Rae
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.41
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    • pp.293-326
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    • 2014
  • Piracy is a worldwide issue, but the deteriorating security situation in the seas off Somalia, the Gulf of Aden and the wider Western Indian Ocean between 2005 and 2012 and in the increasing number of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea are a major problem. The depth of concern for the problem internationally is amply demonstrated by the levels of co-operation and coordination among naval and other forces from several countries that have assembled in the west Indian Ocean region and the Gulf of Aden to escort ships carrying humanitarian aid to Somalia and to protect vulnerable shipping. Notwithstanding this unprecedented effort, the vast sea area in which the pirates now operate makes it difficult to patrol and monitor effectively, particularly with the limited resources available. More resources, in the form of naval vessels and aircraft, are needed and at every opportunity the IMO encourages Member Governments to make greater efforts to provide the additional naval, aerial surveillance and other resources needed through every means possible. IMO provide interim guidance and recommendations to be taken into account when considering the use of PCASP(privately contracted armed security personnel) if and when a flag State determines that such a measure would be lawful and, following a full risk assessment, appropriate. The interim guidance and recommendations of IMO are not intended to endorse or institutionalize the use of armed guards. Therefore, they do not represent any fundamental change of policy by the Organization in this regard. It is for each flag State, individually, to decide whether or not PCASP should be authorized for use on board ships flying their flag. If a flag State decides to permit this practice, it is up to that State to determine the conditions under which authorization will be granted. Therefore, Korea should be introduced rationally PCASP for safe shipping. PCASP on board ships is much the same to special guard personnel of security services industry act. Act plan of Oceans and fisheries ministry on PCASP collides with special guard personnel system of National Police Agency. Rather than new law making, PCASP regukations have to be included in security services industry act. Management Agency of PCASP is to not Oceans and fisheries ministry, but Central Headquarters Korea Coast Guard of Public Safety and Security Ministry because of specialty and closely connection.

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History of Land Registration and Small House Policies in the New Territories of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the People's Republic of China

  • Fung, Philip Sing-Sang;Lee, Almond Sze-Mun
    • Land and Housing Review
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    • v.5 no.1
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    • pp.53-56
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    • 2014
  • Hong Kong, a well-known metropolis characterized by skyscrapers on both sides of the Victoria Harbour, consists mainly of 3 parts, namely the Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon peninsula and the New Territories (N.T.) which is the land area north of Kowloon plus a number of outlying islands. Located in the N.T. are all the new towns, market towns; and in the plains and valleys lie scattered village houses of not more than 3 storeys within the confines of well-defined village. These village houses are governed by a rural housing policy that could be traced back to the very beginning of the former British administration in the N.T. By the Convention of Peking of 1898, the N.T., comprising the massive land area north of Kowloon up to Shenzhen River and 235 islands, was leased to Britain by China for 99 years from 1st July 1898. Soon after occupation, the colonial government conducted a survey of this uncharted territory from 1899 to 1903, and set up a land court to facilitate all land registration work and to resolve disputed claims. By 1905, the Block Crown Leases with Schedule of Lessees and details of the lots, each with a copy of the lot index plan (Demarcation Plan) were executed. Based on the above, Crown rent rolls were prepared for record and rent collection purposes. All grants of land thereafter are known as New Grant lots. After completion and execution of the Block Crown Lease in 1905, N.T. villagers had to purchase village house lots by means of Restricted Village Auctions; and Building Licences were issued to convert private agricultural land for building purposes but gradually replaced by Land Exchanges (i.e. to surrender agricultural land for the re-grant of building land) from the early 1960's until introduction of the current Small House Policy in October 1972. It was not until the current New Territories Small House Policy came into effect in December 1972 that the Land Authority can make direct grant of government land or approve the conversion of self-owned agricultural land to allow indigenous villagers to build houses within the village environs under concessionary terms. Such houses are currently restricted to 700 square feet in area and three storeys with a maximum height of 27 feet. An indigenous villager is a male descendent of a villager who was the resident of a recognized village already existing in 1898. Each villager is only allowed one concessionary grant in his lifetime. Upon return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China on July 1st, 1997, the traditional rights of indigenous villagers are protected under Article 40 of the Basic Law (a mini-constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region). Also all N.T. leases have been extended for 50 years up to 2047. Owing to the escalating demand and spiral landed property prices in recent years, abuse of the N.T. Small House Policy has been reported in some areas and is a concern in some quarters. The Hong Kong Institute of Land Administration attempts to study the history that leads to the current rural housing policy in the New Territories with particular emphasis on the small house policy, hoping that some light can be shed on the "way forward" for such a controversial policy.

The Characteristic and Implication of the View of Object in Oriental Medicine (한의학적(韓醫學的) 대상관(對象觀)의 특징과 성격)

  • Lee, Choong-Yeol
    • The Journal of Korean Medicine
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    • v.16 no.1 s.29
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    • pp.505-530
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    • 1995
  • Recently some people in learned circles of oriental medicine raised a Question about a terminological problem, i.e., 'oriental medical'. This question was thought as an attempt to find out the identity of oriental medicine which exists among the various current medical knowledge systems. In spite of same object, human body, there are diverse medical knowledge systems which has different concepts and theories. This come from the difference of a view of object which defines the experiences of that. The knowledge system of oriental medicine was established by the view of object in oriental medicine which depended on the way of thinking as Yin and Yang. The view of object in oriental medicine has come out in the special cultural soil, namely, the oriental world. Because of this the view of object in oriental medicine cannot be seperated from the oriental world view. What distintive feature does the oriental world view have? It can be summarized as the holistic, dynamical and organic ideas of the world. The term 'oriental medical' is being used to emphasize the characteristic and the peculiarity of the oriental medicine among the various medical knowledge systems. Can the current so called scientific method accept this peculiar and special method of oriental medicine? The efforts of philosophers who had been stimulated by the awful scientific achivements and had tried to find out the unified method penetrating through all the empirical science by mobilizing the logic and mathematics has became out of date for the raise of a question about the inductive method. On the contrary, the theses of theory-laden observation was accepted widely and the relativism was accepted as a new established theory. But the relativism has its own problem. The relativism was founded upon the concept, the incommensurability, which Khun and Feyerabend had proposed. This concept was criticized strongly by some of philosophers because of its own self-refuting. The view of object in oriental medicine has a relative characteristic in the aspect of its urge that in accordance with the perspective a different medical knowledge system can be possible. But our possible choice is the moderate conceptual relativism. Therefore if the view of object in oriental medicine includes the relative aspect, there is the 'conceptual relativity' between the knowledge system of oriental medicine and the western medicine. This preview an important aspect for the standardization and modernizing research of oriental medicine by lending the knowledge of the western medicine. And when we choose the moderate conceptual relativism, it means that we do not support the extreme relativism, that is, 'anything goes'. The concept of truth and rationality cannot be abandoned, and it plays the role of the norm on the knowledge system of oriental medicine and other knowledge systems of medicine in a limited meaning. And the view of object in oriental medicine has an organic view about the human body and the characteristic which wants to interpret the phenomena of human body by using the holistic method. But the availability of this method will be evaluated by the achievements of oriental medicine. Finally what relationship does the theory of oriental medicine have with the world the theory is applied to? It is recognized that the theory of oriental medicine has the instrumental characteristic. But it can be thought the instrumentalism is different from the oriental medical standpoint in the aspect that the instrumentalism seperates the theoretical existence from the observational existence sharply. Because in the oriental thinking way there is no seperation between the mind of observer and the object and no conflict between the idealism and the realism like the western world. For this problem there must be a further study.

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Review on the Justifiable Grounds for Withdrawal of Meaningless Life-sustaining Treatment -Based on a case of Supreme Court's Sentence No. 2009DA17417 (May 21, 2009)- (무의미한 연명치료 중단 등의 기준에 관한 재고 - 대법원 2009.5.21 선고 2009다17417사건 판결을 중심으로 -)

  • Moon, Seong-Jea
    • The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.309-341
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    • 2009
  • According to a case of Supreme Court's Sentence No. 2009DA17417 (May 21, 2009), the Supreme Court judges that 'the right to life is the ultimate one of basic human rights stipulated in the Constitution, so it is required to very limitedly and conservatively determine whether to discontinue any medical practice on which patient's life depends directly.' In addition, the Supreme Court admits that 'only if a patient who comes to a fatal phase before death due to attack of any irreversible disease may execute his or her right of self-determination based on human respect and values and human right to pursue happiness, it is permissible to discontinue life-sustaining treatment for him or her, unless there is any special circumstance.' Furthermore, the Supreme Court finds that 'if a patient who is attacked by any irreversible disease informs medical personnel of his or her intention to agree on the refusal or discontinuance of life-sustaining treatment in advance of his or her potential irreversible loss of consciousness, it is justifiable that he or she already executes the right of self-determination according to prior medical instructions, unless there is any special circumstance where it is reasonably concluded that his or her physician is changed after prior medical instructions for him or her.' The Supreme Court also finds that 'if a patient remains at irreversible loss of consciousness without any prior medical instruction, he or she cannot express his or her intentions at all, so it is rational and complying with social norms to admit possibility of estimating his or her own intentions on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, provided that such a withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment meets his or her interests in view of his or her usual sense of values or beliefs and it is reasonably concluded that he or she could likely choose to discontinue life-sustaining treatment, even if he or she were given any chance to execute his or her right of self-determination.' This judgment is very significant in a sense that it suggests the reasonable orientation of solutions for issues posed concerning withdrawal of meaningless life-sustaining medical efforts. The issues concerning removal of medical instruments for meaningless life-sustaining treatment and discontinuance of such treatment in regard to medical treatment for terminal cases don't seem to be so much big deal when a patient has clear consciousness enough to express his or her intentions, but it counts that there is any issue regarding a patient who comes to irreversible loss of consciousness and cannot express his or her intentions. Therefore, it is required to develop an institutional instrument that allows relevant authority to estimate the scope of physician's medical duties for terminal patients as well as a patient's intentions to withdraw any meaningless treatment during his or her terminal phase involving loss of consciousness. However, Korean judicial authority has yet to clarify detailed cases where it is permissible to discontinue any life-sustaining treatment for a patient in accordance with his or her right of self-determination. In this context, it is inevitable and challenging to make better legislation to improve relevant systems concerning withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. The State must assure the human basic rights for its citizens and needs to prepare a system to assure such basic rights through legislative efforts. In this sense, simply entrusting physician, patient or his or her family with any critical issue like the withdrawal of meaningless life-sustaining treatment, even without any reasonable standard established for such entrustment, means the neglect of official duties by the State. Nevertheless, this issue is not a matter that can be resolved simply by legislative efforts. In order for our society to accept judicial system for withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, it is important to form a social consensus about this issue and also make proactive discussions on it from a variety of standpoints.

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Food Habits and Health Food Consumption Patterns of Adults in the Ulsan Area (울산지역 중.장년층의 식생활 특성과 건강식품 섭취 실태)

  • 유수연;김혜경
    • Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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    • v.8 no.6
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    • pp.889-900
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    • 2003
  • This study was carried out to obtain information regarding eating habits, including health related behavior and health food consumption patterns. The subjects of this study were 149 men and 152 women residing in the Ulsan area. We obtained results by means of a questionnaire and an interview, and these were analyzed using the SPSS package program. The results of this study are summarized as follows The average age of the men was 47.6 $\pm$ 7.3 years and of the women was 47.3 $\pm$ 7.6 years old. The average height and weight of the men were 169.4 $\pm$ 5.5 cm and 67.7 $\pm$ 8.2 kg, respectively. Those of the women were 157.6 $\pm$ 5.0 cm and 58.2 $\pm$ 7.5 kg, respectively. The BMI values of all the subjects ranged from 20.0 to 25.0, all within the normal levels. In the case of dietary patterns, 24.3% of the total population always skipped a meal. In particular, 15.9% of the total population skipped breakfast. No time to eat, no appetite, having no taste, and having poor health were themain reasons for skipping meals. With regard to health care, there was a significant difference between the men and the women with respect to smoking and drinking (p<0.001). Of the total population, 40.5% hardly exercised (less than once a week), 26.2% exercised occasionally, 13.6% frequently exercised, and 19.6% exercised almost every day. A total of 60.7% responded that they were not interested in their health. The mean eating habit score of the subjects was 65.6 $\pm$ 9.9. The women had a higher eating habit score than the men (64.0 $\pm$ 9.6 for the men and 67.2 $\pm$ 9.9 for the women). Except for one group above 60 years, the older group had a higher eating habit score than the younger one. The group having a higher income and a more specialized career had a higher eating habit score than the one having a lower income and a less specialized career. There was also a marital difference. The group of single subjects showed a lower eating habit score than the married group. The group having a higher eating habit score drank, smoked and went out for meals less, and exercised more than the group having lower scores. They also were more concerned about their health. In the older group, there were more diabetic and hypertensive individuals. The subjects who had a higher BMI index were more likely to be patients with hypertension, especially in the men's group. Those who had a higher BMI index and hypertension simultaneously took a variety of medicines and foods for promoting health. Those who worried a lot about their health and had health problems tended to take special foods for their health. Patients usually took tonics. Special foods for health included Chinese medicines, tonic foods, vitamin or mineral supplements and manufactured health food supplements. Preferences for them depended on the sex and age of the subject. In the case of tonic foods, the men liked them more than the women. Foods other than tonic foods were favorites with the women. This study may provide basic information on the eating habits and health related behaviors of middle-aged people. However, further studies are needed to improve the eating habits and to change the nutritional attitudes, so that people can make better choices of health foods.

Research on the Actual Condition of Consciousness that the Students in Dept. of dental hygiene have about Clinical Training (치위생과 학생의 임상실습에 관한 의식실태조사)

  • Kang, Yong-Ju;Jang, Gye-Won
    • Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.1-17
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    • 2004
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the actual condition of consciousness that the students in Dept. of dental hygiene who will be engaged in dental hygiene at a dental office in the future have about a clinical training, to see whether there is any difference between the results, and then to provide fundamental data which can be helpful to develop more effective clinical training programs. For this, we investigated consciousness, that 114 daytime school students and evening school students(76 daytime school students and 38 evening school students) in Dept. of dental hygiene in J college have, using questionnaires on clinical training with Self-Administrated Method. SPSS 12.0 for Windows was used to analyze all of the questionnaires, and the results analyzed at meaningful level a=.05 are like followings: 1. The degree of satisfaction on clinical training was high as average 3.30 ; it was high in case of night training as 3.34, and of a dental office in a general hospital and an university hospital as 3.83. The degree of stress caused by clinical training was high as average 3.30, and it means that they are under relatively heavy pressure ; it was shown they got the most heavy stress as 3.39 at night, as 3.68 at a dental clinic 2. The students showed the highest tendency to recognize that clinical training is needed "for learning various clinical case experiences" as average 3.54 ; the students trained at daytime showed the highest average 3.55, and at a clinical hospital, the highest average 3.64. 3. In the study on an actual condition of consciousness about clinical training according to class difference by time(at day time and at night), there is meaningful difference between two kinds of class ; the students trained at day time showed average 2.68 that they don't like to attend, on the other hand the students at night showed higher average 2.84(p<.05). In the study on an actual condition of consciousness about clinical training according to the institutions they are trained, there is meaningful difference at satisfaction on learning method and amount of assignment : they show the highest degree of satisfaction on the learning method in case of working at a dental office in a general hospital and an university hospital as average 3.3(p<.0.1) ; the amount of assignment was shown most high at a dental clinic and a dental office in a general hospital and an university hospital as average 3.00 each(p<.05). 4. In the study of the degree of satisfaction on the clinical training, it has relatively high connections with learning contents(r=.656), learning methods(r=.497), special lessons and supplementary lessons(r=.472), the case they don't like attend at work (r=-.439), discriminatory treatment(r=-.25l), respectability on the senior dental hygienists(r=.464), a social status of a dental hygienist(r=.213), the degree of satisfaction from the relationship with other dental hygienists(r=.274), the degree of understanding which clinical training institutions have on the trained students(r=.494), trainers' ability to teach the students(r=.499). enthusiasm on guiding (r=.523), the amount of assignment(r=.333). 5. In the study on stress they got from a clinical training, it has relatively high connections with learning contents(r=-.399). learning methods(r=-.536), comprehension on training program(r=-.208), special lessons and supplementary lessons(r=-.306), the case they don't like attend at work(r=.467), discriminatory treatment(r=.366), respectability on the senior dental hygienists(r=-.341), a social status of a dental hygienist(r=-.l97), the degree of satisfaction from the relationship with another dental hygienists(r=-.289), the degree of understanding which clinical training institutions have on the trained students(r=-.430), trainers' ability to teach the students(r=-.396), enthusiasm on guiding(r=-.495).

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Accepting Method in Classical Literature and Education ; Past, Present, and Future (고전문학의 향유방식과 교육; 과거, 현재, 미래)

  • Son, Tae-do
    • Journal of Korean Classical Literature and Education
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    • no.37
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    • pp.5-45
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    • 2018
  • Today, in the case of literary works such as modern poetry, novels, 'literature production : literature acceptance' are relatively simple as 'writing : reading'. However, in classical literature, there are ways of 'singing, chanting, narrating, performing, public reading, writing : listening, reading.' Modern literary works such as poetry and novels are sole arts made up only of literature, but classical literature have many complex arts accompanied by music, theater, etc. In order to understand the way classical literature, it is necessary to consider music, theater, etc. also. There are a number of subjects to research today in relation to the accepting method of classical literature. There are such things at Hyang-ga (향가), Goryeo Sog-yo (고려속요), Sijo (시조) and Gasa (가사) in of classical poetry. There is a public reading in classical novels. There is securing video materialㄴ for narrators in oral literature. And there are Si-chang (시창. 詩唱) and aloud reading in chinese proses. 'Listening literature', such as the oral literature needs to have the A. Lord's 'formular theory' - 'formular' (general words), 'themes' (general subject), and 'improvisation.' It is the opposite of contemporary poetry and novels that value ' special words', 'special contents', and 'original text.' Classical literature with a great deal of 'listening literature' besides ' reading literature' needs to have this 'formular theory' too basically. In the case of 'excessive pornographic' oriented events in Goryeo Gayo (고려가요) and Pansori (판소리), a vision is required to set up a space for the realization of literature. The haman basic elements like a man and woman's body subject can be evoked as a literature means at open place for anonymous people. Unlike modern poetry and novels, which are 'reading literature', and contain only literature, classical literature have 'listening literature' besides 'reading literature', and have complex arts - classical poetry (literature and music), and oral literature (literature, music, theater etc.) These aspects are available to research modern mass media literature, which are all 'listening literature,' and all complex arts - pop songs (literature and music), movies (literature, drama, image, music etc.) and TV dramas (literature, drama, image, music etc.). Thus, a proper understanding and consideration of the accepting method is very important in understanding, researching and educating classical literature.

Changgyeongwon Ya-Aeng as Modern Urban Culture - An Interpretation based on Benjamin's Phantasmagoria - (근대 도시 문화로서 창경원 야앵 - 벤야민의 '판타스마고리아'를 중심으로 -)

  • Kwon, Young-Ran;Pae, Jeong-Hann
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.46 no.1
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    • pp.61-71
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    • 2018
  • This study sought to interpret the Ya-Aeng (夜櫻) from the viewpoint of urban society, focusing on the occurrence of the Ya-Aeng at Changgyeongwon (昌慶苑) in the modern city of Kyungsung. When the Ya-Aeng started in the 1920s, the social aspects of Kyungsung were in a transitional period from the traditional to the modern. The social modernization of Kyungsung has had a dramatic impact on the Ya-Aeng as a part of the city culture. Using the concept of 'phantasmagoria', which was widespread in Kyungsung society and the Ya-Aeng, this study has established three implications of the Ya-Aeng. First, Kyungsung's phantasmagoria appeared in the form of crowds, spectacles, and experiences. This study suggests that such interpretation also applies to the Ya-Aeng. This means that the capitalism-controlled modern society on one hand and the Ya-Aeng on the other had the same mechanism. Therefore, the Ya-Aeng, as modern city culture, becomes a miniature version of Kyungsung and a modern commodity world in itself. Second, the fact that phantasmagoria is a major element of the landscape of the Ya-Aeng means that there is a special way of seeing. For modern subjects, the phantasmagoria of the Ya-Aeng has acted as a learning mechanism for a modern way of seeing. Third and finally, the phantasmagoria of the Ya-Aeng was an illusion to encourage the continued consumption of this culture and at the same time, forget about the capitalism-controlled urban culture. At this time, capitalism was dominated by the influence of Japanese imperialism. The significance of this study lies in that it expands the idea of the Ya-Aeng from the events inside Changgyeongwon into the urban culture, which is a projection of modern urban society. In addition, where the Ya-Aeng in the past had been regarded as a decadent and poor-quality spring celebration in comparison to the traditional spring celebration, this study proposes a new point of view for the Ya-Aeng in an urban social context.

Recommender Systems using Structural Hole and Collaborative Filtering (구조적 공백과 협업필터링을 이용한 추천시스템)

  • Kim, Mingun;Kim, Kyoung-Jae
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.107-120
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    • 2014
  • This study proposes a novel recommender system using the structural hole analysis to reflect qualitative and emotional information in recommendation process. Although collaborative filtering (CF) is known as the most popular recommendation algorithm, it has some limitations including scalability and sparsity problems. The scalability problem arises when the volume of users and items become quite large. It means that CF cannot scale up due to large computation time for finding neighbors from the user-item matrix as the number of users and items increases in real-world e-commerce sites. Sparsity is a common problem of most recommender systems due to the fact that users generally evaluate only a small portion of the whole items. In addition, the cold-start problem is the special case of the sparsity problem when users or items newly added to the system with no ratings at all. When the user's preference evaluation data is sparse, two users or items are unlikely to have common ratings, and finally, CF will predict ratings using a very limited number of similar users. Moreover, it may produces biased recommendations because similarity weights may be estimated using only a small portion of rating data. In this study, we suggest a novel limitation of the conventional CF. The limitation is that CF does not consider qualitative and emotional information about users in the recommendation process because it only utilizes user's preference scores of the user-item matrix. To address this novel limitation, this study proposes cluster-indexing CF model with the structural hole analysis for recommendations. In general, the structural hole means a location which connects two separate actors without any redundant connections in the network. The actor who occupies the structural hole can easily access to non-redundant, various and fresh information. Therefore, the actor who occupies the structural hole may be a important person in the focal network and he or she may be the representative person in the focal subgroup in the network. Thus, his or her characteristics may represent the general characteristics of the users in the focal subgroup. In this sense, we can distinguish friends and strangers of the focal user utilizing the structural hole analysis. This study uses the structural hole analysis to select structural holes in subgroups as an initial seeds for a cluster analysis. First, we gather data about users' preference ratings for items and their social network information. For gathering research data, we develop a data collection system. Then, we perform structural hole analysis and find structural holes of social network. Next, we use these structural holes as cluster centroids for the clustering algorithm. Finally, this study makes recommendations using CF within user's cluster, and compare the recommendation performances of comparative models. For implementing experiments of the proposed model, we composite the experimental results from two experiments. The first experiment is the structural hole analysis. For the first one, this study employs a software package for the analysis of social network data - UCINET version 6. The second one is for performing modified clustering, and CF using the result of the cluster analysis. We develop an experimental system using VBA (Visual Basic for Application) of Microsoft Excel 2007 for the second one. This study designs to analyzing clustering based on a novel similarity measure - Pearson correlation between user preference rating vectors for the modified clustering experiment. In addition, this study uses 'all-but-one' approach for the CF experiment. In order to validate the effectiveness of our proposed model, we apply three comparative types of CF models to the same dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the other comparative models. In especial, the proposed model significantly performs better than two comparative modes with the cluster analysis from the statistical significance test. However, the difference between the proposed model and the naive model does not have statistical significance.

A Hybrid Forecasting Framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Artificial Neural Network (사례기반 추론기법과 인공신경망을 이용한 서비스 수요예측 프레임워크)

  • Hwang, Yousub
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.43-57
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    • 2012
  • To enhance the competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, an enterprise management must make the right decision in many business activities based on both internal and external information. Thus, providing accurate information plays a prominent role in management's decision making. Intuitively, historical data can provide a feasible estimate through the forecasting models. Therefore, if the service department can estimate the service quantity for the next period, the service department can then effectively control the inventory of service related resources such as human, parts, and other facilities. In addition, the production department can make load map for improving its product quality. Therefore, obtaining an accurate service forecast most likely appears to be critical to manufacturing companies. Numerous investigations addressing this problem have generally employed statistical methods, such as regression or autoregressive and moving average simulation. However, these methods are only efficient for data with are seasonal or cyclical. If the data are influenced by the special characteristics of product, they are not feasible. In our research, we propose a forecasting framework that predicts service demand of manufacturing organization by combining Case-based reasoning (CBR) and leveraging an unsupervised artificial neural network based clustering analysis (i.e., Self-Organizing Maps; SOM). We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying unsupervised artificial neural network-based machine-learning techniques in the service forecasting domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) We applied CBR and SOM in a new forecasting domain such as service demand forecasting. (2) We proposed our combined approach between CBR and SOM in order to overcome limitations of traditional statistical forecasting methods and We have developed a service forecasting tool based on the proposed approach using an unsupervised artificial neural network and Case-based reasoning. In this research, we conducted an empirical study on a real digital TV manufacturer (i.e., Company A). In addition, we have empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real sales and service related data from digital TV manufacturer. In our empirical experiments, we intend to explore the performance of our proposed service forecasting framework when compared to the performances predicted by other two service forecasting methods; one is traditional CBR based forecasting model and the other is the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. We ran each service forecasting 144 times; each time, input data were randomly sampled for each service forecasting framework. To evaluate accuracy of forecasting results, we used Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) as primary performance measure in our experiments. We conducted one-way ANOVA test with the 144 measurements of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches. For example, the F-ratio of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches is 67.25 and the p-value is 0.000. This means that the difference between the MAPE of the three different service forecasting approaches is significant at the level of 0.000. Since there is a significant difference among the different service forecasting approaches, we conducted Tukey's HSD post hoc test to determine exactly which means of MAPE are significantly different from which other ones. In terms of MAPE, Tukey's HSD post hoc test grouped the three different service forecasting approaches into three different subsets in the following order: our proposed approach > traditional CBR-based service forecasting approach > the existing forecasting approach used by Company A. Consequently, our empirical experiments show that our proposed approach outperformed the traditional CBR based forecasting model and the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some research background information such as summary of CBR and SOM. Section 3 presents a hybrid service forecasting framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Self-Organizing Maps, while the empirical evaluation results are summarized in Section 4. Conclusion and future research directions are finally discussed in Section 5.