• Title/Summary/Keyword: Systems approach

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Health Economic Approach to End-of-Life Care in the US: Based on Medicare (말기의료의 경제적 요소에 관한 논의: 미국 메디케어 상황을 중심으로)

  • Suk, Ryan
    • The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.335-373
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    • 2014
  • According to one Medicare report, in the US, total federal spending on health care expends almost 18 percent of the nation's GDP, about double what most industrialized nations spend on health care. And in 2011, Medicare spending reached close to $554 billion, which amounted to 21 percent of the total spent on U.S. health care in that year. Of that $554 billion, Medicare spent 28 percent, or about $170 billion, on patients' last six months of life. So what are the reasons of this high cost in EOL care and its possible solutions? Much spendings of Medicare on End-of-Life care for the terminally ill/chronically ill in the US has led health economics experts to assess the characteristics of the care. Decades of study shows that EOL care is usually supply-sensitive and poor in cost-effectiveness. The volume of care is sensitively depending on the supply of resources, rather than the severity of illness or preferences of patients. This means at the End-of-Life care, the medical resources are being overused. On the other hand, opposed to the common assumption, "The more care the better utility", the study shows that the outcome is very poor. Actually the patient preference and concerns are quite the opposite from what intense EOL care would bring about. This study analyzes the reasons for the supply-sensitiveness of EOL care. It can be resulted from the common misconception about the intense care and the outcome, physicians' mission for patients, lack of End-of-Life Care Decision which helps the patients choose their own preferred treatment intensity. It also could be resulted from physicians' fear of legal liabilities, and the management strategy since the hospitals are also seeking for financial benefits. This study suggests the possible solutions for over-treatment at the End-of-Life resulting from supply-sensitiveness. Solutions can be sought in two aspects, legal implementation and management strategy. In order to implement advance directive properly, active ethics education for physicians to change their attitude toward EOL care and more conversations about end-of-life care between physicians and patients is crucial, and incentive system for the physicians who actively have the conversations with patients will also help. Also, the general education towards the public is also important in the long run, and easy and official advance directive registry system-such as online registry-has to be built and utilized more widely. Alternative strategies in management are also needed. For example, the new strategic cost management and management education, such as cutting unnecessary costs and resetting values as medical providers have to be considered. In order to effectively resolve the problem in EOL care for the terminally ill/chronically ill and provide better experience to the patients, first of all, the misconception and the wrong conventional wisdom among doctors, patients, and the government have to be overcome. And then there should be improvements in systems and cultures of the EOL care.

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Performance of Drip Irrigation System in Banana Cultuivation - Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

  • Kumar, K. Nirmal Ravi;Kumar, M. Suresh
    • Agribusiness and Information Management
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.17-26
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    • 2016
  • India is largest producer of banana in the world producing 29.72 million tonnes from an area of 0.803 million ha with a productivity of 35.7 MT ha-1 and accounted for 15.48 and 27.01 per cent of the world's area and production respectively (www.nhb.gov.in). In India, Tamil Nadu leads other states both in terms of area and production followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. In Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, Kurnool district had special reputation in the cultivation of banana in an area of 5765 hectares with an annual production of 2.01 lakh tonnes in the year 2012-13 and hence, it was purposively chosen for the study. On $23^{rd}$ November 2003, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has commenced a comprehensive project called 'Andhra Pradesh Micro Irrigation Project (APMIP)', first of its kind in the world so as to promote water use efficiency. APMIP is offering 100 per cent of subsidy in case of SC, ST and 90 per cent in case of other categories of farmers up to 5.0 acres of land. In case of acreage between 5-10 acres, 70 per cent subsidy and acreage above 10, 50 per cent of subsidy is given to the farmer beneficiaries. The sampling frame consists of Kurnool district, two mandals, four villages and 180 sample farmers comprising of 60 farmers each from Marginal (<1ha), Small (1-2ha) and Other (>2ha) categories. A well structured pre-tested schedule was employed to collect the requisite information pertaining to the performance of drip irrigation among the sample farmers and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was employed to analyze the performance of drip irrigation in banana farms. The performance of drip irrigation was assessed based on the parameters like: Land Development Works (LDW), Fertigation costs (FC), Volume of water supplied (VWS), Annual maintenance costs of drip irrigation (AMC), Economic Status of the farmer (ES), Crop Productivity (CP) etc. The first four parameters are considered as inputs and last two as outputs for DEA modelling purposes. The findings revealed that, the number of farms operating at CRS are more in number in other farms (46.66%) followed by marginal (45%) and small farms (28.33%). Similarly, regarding the number of farmers operating at VRS, the other farms are again more in number with 61.66 per cent followed by marginal (53.33%) and small farms (35%). With reference to scale efficiency, marginal farms dominate the scenario with 57 per cent followed by others (55%) and small farms (50%). At pooled level, 26.11 per cent of the farms are being operated at CRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.6138 i.e., 47 out of 180 farms. Nearly 40 per cent of the farmers at pooled level are being operated at VRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.7241. As regards to scale efficiency, nearly 52 per cent of the farmers (94 out of 180 farmers) at pooled level, either performed at the optimum scale or were close to the optimum scale (farms having scale efficiency values equal to or more than 0.90). Majority of the farms (39.44%) are operating at IRS and only 29 per cent of the farmers are operating at DRS. This signifies that, more resources should be provided to these farms operating at IRS and the same should be decreased towards the farms operating at DRS. Nearly 32 per cent of the farms are operating at CRS indicating efficient utilization of resources. Log linear regression model was used to analyze the major determinants of input use efficiency in banana farms. The input variables considered under DEA model were again considered as influential factors for the CRS obtained for the three categories of farmers. Volume of water supplied ($X_1$) and fertigation cost ($X_2$) are the major determinants of banana farms across all the farmer categories and even at pooled level. In view of their positive influence on the CRS, it is essential to strengthen modern irrigation infrastructure like drip irrigation and offer more fertilizer subsidies to the farmer to enhance the crop production on cost-effective basis in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, India. This study further suggests that, the present era of Information Technology will help the irrigation management in the context of generating new techniques, extension, adoption and information. It will also guide the farmers in irrigation scheduling and quantifying the irrigation water requirements in accordance with the water availability in a particular season. So, it is high time for the Government of India to pay adequate attention towards the applications of 'Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its applications in irrigation water management' for facilitating the deployment of Decision Supports Systems (DSSs) at various levels of planning and management of water resources in the country.

A review of factors that regulate extracellular enzyme activity in wetland soils (습지 토양 내 체외효소 활성도를 조절하는 인자에 대한 고찰)

  • Kim, Haryun
    • Korean Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.51 no.2
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    • pp.97-107
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    • 2015
  • Wetlands constitute a transitional zone between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and have unique characteristics such as frequent inundation, inflow of nutrients from terrestrial ecosystems, presence of plants adapted to grow in water, and soil that is occasionally oxygen deficient due to saturation. These characteristics and the presence of vegetation determine physical and chemical properties that affect decomposition rates of organic matter (OM). Decomposition of OM is associated with activities of various extracellular enzymes (EE) produced by bacteria and fungi. Extracellular enzymes convert macromolecules to simple compounds such as labile organic carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S) that can be easily taken up by microbes and plants. Therefore, the enzymatic approach is helpful to understand the decomposition rates of OM and nutrient cycling in wetland soils. This paper reviews the physical and biogeochemical factors that regulate extracellular enzyme activities (EEa) in wetland soils, including those of ${\beta}$-glucosidase, ${\beta}$-N-acetylglucosaminidase, phosphatase, arylsulfatase, and phenol oxidase that decompose organic matter and release C, N, P, and S nutrients for microbial and plant growths. Effects of pH, water table, and particle size of OM on EEa were not significantly different among sites, whereas the influence of temperature on EEa varied depending on microbial acclimation to extreme temperatures. Addition of C, N, or P affected EEa differently depending on the nutrient state, C:N ratio, limiting factors, and types of enzymes of wetland soils. Substrate quality influenced EEa more significantly than did other factors. Also, drainage of wetland and increased temperature due to global climate change can stimulate phenol oxidase activity, and anthropogenic N deposition can enhance the hydrolytic EEa; these effects increase OM decomposition rates and emissions of $CO_2$ and $CH_4$ from wetland systems. The researches on the relationship between microbial structures and EE functions, and environmental factors controlling EEa can be helpful to manipulate wetland ecosystems for treating pollutants and to monitor wetland ecosystem services.

Real-Time 3D Ultrasound Imaging Method Using a Cross Array Based on Synthetic Aperture Focusing: I. Spherical Wave Transmission Approach (합성구경 기반의 교차어레이를 이용한 실시간 3차원 초음파 영상화 기법 : I. 구형파 송신 방법)

  • 김강식;송태경
    • Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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    • v.25 no.5
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    • pp.391-401
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    • 2004
  • 3D imaging systems using 2D phased arrays have a large number of active channels, compelling to use a very expensive and bulky beamforming hardware, and suffer from low volume rate because, in principle, at least one ultrasound transmit-receive event is necessary to construct each scanline. A high speed 3D imaging method using a cross array proposed previously to solve the above limitations can implement fast scanning and dynamic focusing in the lateral direction but suffer from low resolution except at the fixed transmit focusing along the elevational direction. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new real-time volumetric imaging method using a cross array based on the synthetic aperture technique. In the proposed method, ultrasound wave is transmitted successively using each elements of an 1D transmit array transducer, one at a time, which is placed along the elevational direction and for each firing, the returning pulse echoes are received using all elements of an 1D receive array transducer placed along the lateral direction. On receive, by employing the conventional dynamic focusing and synthetic aperture method along lateral and elevational directions, respectively, ultrasound waves can be focused effectively at all imaging points. In addition, in the proposed method, a volume of interest consisting of any required number of slice images, can be constructed with the same number of transmit-receive steps as the total number of transmit array elements. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method can provide the same and greatly improved resolutions in the lateral and elevational directions, respectively, compared with the 3D imaging method using a cross array based on the conventional fixed focusing. In the accompanying paper, we will also propose a new real-time 3D imaging method using a cross array for improving transmit power and elevational spatial resolution, which uses linear wave fronts on transmit.

A Study on the Compensatory Education for the Disadvantaged Children in Preschool Age (Focussed on the Programs of Compensatory Education in the U.S.A. and Japan) (불리(不利)한 환경(環境)의 학령전(學齡前) 아동(兒童)을 위한 보상교육(補償敎育)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究) - 미국(美國) 및 일본(日本)의 보상교육(補償敎育)·프로그램을 중심(中心)으로 -)

  • Chong, Young-Sook;Lee, Hee-Ja
    • Korean Journal of Child Studies
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    • v.1
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    • pp.65-81
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    • 1980
  • This study is aimed at investigating the compensatory education which was already implemented or is being implemented in the U.S.A. and Japan; and at studying the types of programs and their characteristics; and at sounding out the possibilities of the application of such programs in family and social conditions is Korea. In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives, the established items for the study are as follows: (1) Various types of early children's education (2) Programs of compensatory education for the disadvantaged Children (3) Head Start Program, Early Training Project and Montessori School (4) Integrated Preschool Programs (5) Day-Care Center for employed mothers We investigated the various compensatory education programs for the preschool children who are in economically, socially, culturally disadvantaged conditions. Head Start Programs were federally supported programs for preschool children and opened as summer programs in 1965 for the first time. The purpose of Head Start has been to give preschool children the kinds of experiences they need in preparation for school. The Head Start children were found to be significantly better prepared for school than the normal children. However, after six to eight months, their initial advantages had virtually. disappeared and then the simple problem with Head Start and other such programs was that little long-term good could be evidenced unless the high quality educational environment was maintained. Therefore, to solve this problem, three other programs were funded as part of the overall Head Start. These three programs are the Parent-Child Center, Home Start, and the Child and Family Resources Program. The Early Training Project for disadvantaged children was implemented by Klaus and Gray of Peabody College in 1962. The program was a field research study concerned with the development and testing over time of procedures for improving the educability of young children from low income homes. Its major concern was to study whether it was possible to offset the progressive retardation observed in the public schooling careers of children, living in deprived circumstances. Children, who were trained through the Early Training Project were superior to control groups in the test of IQ and vocabulary as well as linguistic abilities, and preparation for reading. This project showed the possibilities which could prevent preschool children from being disadvantaged socially, culturally and mentally. In 1907, Montessori School was established by Maria Montessori in Italy and her school program has been introduced at present to several countries in the world as one compensatory educations. She first began her experimental methods with retarded children, followed by disadvantaged children from the tenements of Rome. The Montessori approach futures a prepared environment and carefully designed, self-correcting materials. The Montessori curriculum presents tastes that feature sequence, order, and regularity, in addition to those that develop motor and sensory skills. She was interested in children's intellectual development and in developing good work habits. One of the latest developed programs for disadvantaged children is "Integrated Preschool Program" which has successfully integrated handicapped and nonhandicapped children. Several studies have showed that handicapped children in integrated school environments are accepted by and interact with their nonhandicapped peers. In fact, this program provides a number of potential, and perhaps opportunities for nonhandicapped children to serve as valuable resources in fostering the development of their handicapped peers. Next we turn to Japanese programs which are divided into two different types. One is Day-Care Center which was established by Child Welfare Law and the other is kindergarten organized by School Education Law. The kindergarten opened in 1876 and it has been part of school systems since 1947 by the implementation of education law, and the Day-Care Center which started in 1890 for the employed mothers. was changed into Day-Nursery by the enactment of child welfare law in 1947. The laws and operational regulations for the Day-Nursery were set up and were put in effect by the establishment standard acts of children welfare facilities, and the Day-Nursery has been operated in various types by the increasing demand, chiefly because of the socio-economical changes of family structures in both urban and suburban areas. Nursery education for physically and mentally disadvantaged children is for those who are blind, deaf and dumb, mentally retarded; physically disadvantaged by accidents or diseases. Montessori education in Japan was started in 1968 and many research groups for studying Montessori were organized. In 1977, Montessori remedial education society was also organized in which they started a number of studies; a study for developing materials; in-service training for the remedial education; and seminars and lectures, etc It is strongly suggested that we study the early educations that are being implemented in Japan and a variety of compensatory educations that were already implemented in the U.S.A. and modify them for the organization of our own model and properly accommodate them to our social needs.

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Development of a Home-based Nursing Intervention, Mothering Program for Low-Birth-Weight Infants (저체중출생아를 위한 가정간호형 모성역할중재 프로그램 개발과 그 효과에 대한 연구)

  • Han, Kyung-Ja
    • Journal of Home Health Care Nursing
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.5-24
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    • 2001
  • The purpose of this study was to develop a parenting intervention program and determine the efficacy of the program with low-birth weight infants and their mothers. Nine dyads for the experimental group and twelve dyads for the control group discharged from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a University Hospital in Seoul were recruited for the study. For the intervention group, programmed education and support which focused on the maternal sensitivity of the infant's behavior. rearing environment. motherinfant interaction and infant care were given to each subject. Individual counseling and home visits were provided at discharge, one week after discharge. and one and three months of corrected age in every infant. Structured questionaires were administered and feeding interactions were videotaped and coded by a blinded certified observer. A Quasi-experimental design was conducted for this study. Postpartum depression, maternal self esteem. infant care burden, HOME. mother-infant interaction, and infant development were measured. Results were in favor of the intervention versus the control group. On the Beck depression inventory, intervention mothers showed decreasing trends in depressive symptom vs control mothers although, there were statistically no significant differences between the two groups at each time. The mean score of experimental group was 11.55(mild depression state) at discharge and became 8,6(normal state) at 1 month of corrected age. On the other hand, the mean score of the control group was 13.92(mild depression state) at discharge and became 14.0. Maternal self esteem in both groups improved over time. Infant care burden in both groups was also shown to increase over time. There was a significant difference between the two groups in HOME(p=.0340) at 3 months of corrected age. HOME scores of the experimental group and the control's were 31.10 and 25.58, respectively. Mothers' emotional and language responses were significantly high in the intervention group compared with the control group(p=.0155). Intervention group (53.33) showed a significantly high quality of motherinfant interaction compared with the in control group (42.80)(p =.0340). Intervention group mothers appeared have a better quality of mother-infant interaction behaviors. On the other hand, there was no statistical difference in the infant part between groups. Intervention group infants had higher trends in a general developmental quotient: although, there was no statistical difference between groups. The general developmental quotient of intervention infants was 102.56 and control's was 91.28. However, the developmental quotient of the domain of 'individuality-sociality' was higher in the intervention group infants compared with the control's(p=.0155). The concerns identified by parents revealed two domains of an infants' health management -knowledge and skills in caregiving of lowbirthweight-infants, characteristics of lowbirthweight infants, identifying a developmental milestone, coping with emergency situations and relaxation strategies of mothers from the infant care burden. Interview data with the mothers of low-birth weight infants can be used to develop intervention program contents. Limited intervention time and frequency due to time and cost limitations of this study should be modified. The intervention should be continuously implemented when low-birth weight infants become three years old. An NNNS demonstration appeared to be a very effective intervention for the mothers to improve the quality of mother-infant interactions. Therefore intervening in the mothers of low-birth weight infants as early after delivery as possible is desirable. This study has shown that home visit interventions are worthwhile for mothers only beyond the approach as an essential factor in ability of facilitating a growth fostering environment. In conclusion. the intervention program of this study was very effective in enhancing the parenting for the mothers of low-birth weight infants, resulting in health promotion of low-birth weight infants. The home-visit outreach intervention program of this study will contribute to the health delivery system in this country where there is a lack of continuous follow-up programs for low-birth weight infants after discharge from NICU, if it is activated as part of the home visit programs in community health systems.

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Comparative Analysis of ViSCa Platform-based Mobile Payment Service with other Cases (스마트카드 가상화(ViSCa) 플랫폼 기반 모바일 결제 서비스 제안 및 타 사례와의 비교분석)

  • Lee, June-Yeop;Lee, Kyoung-Jun
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.163-178
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    • 2014
  • Following research proposes "Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa)" which is a security system that aims to provide a multi-device platform for the deployment of services that require a strong security protocol, both for the access & authentication and execution of its applications and focuses on analyzing Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) platform-based mobile payment service by comparing with other similar cases. At the present day, the appearance of new ICT, the diffusion of new user devices (such as smartphones, tablet PC, and so on) and the growth of internet penetration rate are creating many world-shaking services yet in the most of these applications' private information has to be shared, which means that security breaches and illegal access to that information are real threats that have to be solved. Also mobile payment service is, one of the innovative services, has same issues which are real threats for users because mobile payment service sometimes requires user identification, an authentication procedure and confidential data sharing. Thus, an extra layer of security is needed in their communication and execution protocols. The Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa), concept is a holistic approach and centralized management for a security system that pursues to provide a ubiquitous multi-device platform for the arrangement of mobile payment services that demand a powerful security protocol, both for the access & authentication and execution of its applications. In this sense, Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) offers full interoperability and full access from any user device without any loss of security. The concept prevents possible attacks by third parties, guaranteeing the confidentiality of personal data, bank accounts or private financial information. The Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) concept is split in two different phases: the execution of the user authentication protocol on the user device and the cloud architecture that executes the secure application. Thus, the secure service access is guaranteed at anytime, anywhere and through any device supporting previously required security mechanisms. The security level is improved by using virtualization technology in the cloud. This virtualization technology is used terminal virtualization to virtualize smart card hardware and thrive to manage virtualized smart cards as a whole, through mobile cloud technology in Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) platform-based mobile payment service. This entire process is referred to as Smart Card as a Service (SCaaS). Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) platform-based mobile payment service virtualizes smart card, which is used as payment mean, and loads it in to the mobile cloud. Authentication takes place through application and helps log on to mobile cloud and chooses one of virtualized smart card as a payment method. To decide the scope of the research, which is comparing Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) platform-based mobile payment service with other similar cases, we categorized the prior researches' mobile payment service groups into distinct feature and service type. Both groups store credit card's data in the mobile device and settle the payment process at the offline market. By the location where the electronic financial transaction information (data) is stored, the groups can be categorized into two main service types. First is "App Method" which loads the data in the server connected to the application. Second "Mobile Card Method" stores its data in the Integrated Circuit (IC) chip, which holds financial transaction data, which is inbuilt in the mobile device secure element (SE). Through prior researches on accept factors of mobile payment service and its market environment, we came up with six key factors of comparative analysis which are economic, generality, security, convenience(ease of use), applicability and efficiency. Within the chosen group, we compared and analyzed the selected cases and Virtualization of Smart Cards (ViSCa) platform-based mobile payment service.

Participation Level in Online Knowledge Sharing: Behavioral Approach on Wikipedia (온라인 지식공유의 참여정도: 위키피디아에 대한 행태적 접근)

  • Park, Hyun Jung;Lee, Hong Joo;Kim, Jong Woo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.97-121
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    • 2013
  • With the growing importance of knowledge for sustainable competitive advantages and innovation in a volatile environment, many researches on knowledge sharing have been conducted. However, previous researches have mostly relied on the questionnaire survey which has inherent perceptive errors of respondents. The current research has drawn the relationship among primary participant behaviors towards the participation level in knowledge sharing, basically from online user behaviors on Wikipedia, a representative community for online knowledge collaboration. Without users' participation in knowledge sharing, knowledge collaboration for creating knowledge cannot be successful. By the way, the editing patterns of Wikipedia users are diverse, resulting in different revisiting periods for the same number of edits, and thus varying results of shared knowledge. Therefore, we illuminated the participation level of knowledge sharing from two different angles of number of edits and revisiting period. The behavioral dimensions affecting the level of participation in knowledge sharing includes the article talk for public discussion and user talk for private messaging, and community registration, which are observable on Wiki platform. Public discussion is being progressed on article talk pages arranged for exchanging ideas about each article topic. An article talk page is often divided into several sections which mainly address specific type of issues raised during the article development procedure. From the diverse opinions about the relatively trivial things such as what text, link, or images should be added or removed and how they should be restructured to the profound professional insights are shared, negotiated, and improved over the course of discussion. Wikipedia also provides personal user talk pages as a private messaging tool. On these pages, diverse personal messages such as casual greetings, stories about activities on Wikipedia, and ordinary affairs of life are exchanged. If anyone wants to communicate with another person, he or she visits the person's user talk page and leaves a message. Wikipedia articles are assessed according to seven quality grades, of which the featured article level is the highest. The dataset includes participants' behavioral data related with 2,978 articles, which have reached the featured article level, with editing histories of articles, their article talk histories, and user talk histories extracted from user talk pages for each article. The time period for analysis is from the initiation of articles until their promotion to the featured article level. The number of edits represents the total number of participation in the editing of an article, and the revisiting period is the time difference between the first and last edits. At first, the participation levels of each user category classified according to behavioral dimensions have been analyzed and compared. And then, robust regressions have been conducted on the relationships among independent variables reflecting the degree of behavioral characteristics and the dependent variable representing the participation level. Especially, through adopting a motivational theory adequate for online environment in setting up research hypotheses, this work suggests a theoretical framework for the participation level of online knowledge sharing. Consequently, this work reached the following practical behavioral results besides some theoretical implications. First, both public discussion and private messaging positively affect the participation level in knowledge sharing. Second, public discussion exerts greater influence than private messaging on the participation level. Third, a synergy effect of public discussion and private messaging on the number of edits was found, whereas a pretty weak negative interaction effect of them on the revisiting period was observed. Fourth, community registration has a significant impact on the revisiting period, whereas being insignificant on the number of edits. Fifth, when it comes to the relation generated from private messaging, the frequency or depth of relation is shown to be more critical than the scope of relation for the participation level.

The Prediction of Currency Crises through Artificial Neural Network (인공신경망을 이용한 경제 위기 예측)

  • Lee, Hyoung Yong;Park, Jung Min
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.4
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    • pp.19-43
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    • 2016
  • This study examines the causes of the Asian exchange rate crisis and compares it to the European Monetary System crisis. In 1997, emerging countries in Asia experienced financial crises. Previously in 1992, currencies in the European Monetary System had undergone the same experience. This was followed by Mexico in 1994. The objective of this paper lies in the generation of useful insights from these crises. This research presents a comparison of South Korea, United Kingdom and Mexico, and then compares three different models for prediction. Previous studies of economic crisis focused largely on the manual construction of causal models using linear techniques. However, the weakness of such models stems from the prevalence of nonlinear factors in reality. This paper uses a structural equation model to analyze the causes, followed by a neural network model to circumvent the linear model's weaknesses. The models are examined in the context of predicting exchange rates In this paper, data were quarterly ones, and Consumer Price Index, Gross Domestic Product, Interest Rate, Stock Index, Current Account, Foreign Reserves were independent variables for the prediction. However, time periods of each country's data are different. Lisrel is an emerging method and as such requires a fresh approach to financial crisis prediction model design, along with the flexibility to accommodate unexpected change. This paper indicates the neural network model has the greater prediction performance in Korea, Mexico, and United Kingdom. However, in Korea, the multiple regression shows the better performance. In Mexico, the multiple regression is almost indifferent to the Lisrel. Although Lisrel doesn't show the significant performance, the refined model is expected to show the better result. The structural model in this paper should contain the psychological factor and other invisible areas in the future work. The reason of the low hit ratio is that the alternative model in this paper uses only the financial market data. Thus, we cannot consider the other important part. Korea's hit ratio is lower than that of United Kingdom. So, there must be the other construct that affects the financial market. So does Mexico. However, the United Kingdom's financial market is more influenced and explained by the financial factors than Korea and Mexico.

An Interactive Cooking Video Query Service System with Linked Data (링크드 데이터를 이용한 인터랙티브 요리 비디오 질의 서비스 시스템)

  • Park, Woo-Ri;Oh, Kyeong-Jin;Hong, Myung-Duk;Jo, Geun-Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.59-76
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    • 2014
  • The revolution of smart media such as smart phone, smart TV and tablets has brought easiness for people to get contents and related information anywhere and anytime. The characteristics of the smart media have changed user behavior for watching the contents from passive attitude into active one. Video is a kind of multimedia resources and widely used to provide information effectively. People not only watch video contents, but also search for related information to specific objects appeared in the contents. However, people have to use extra views or devices to find the information because the existing video contents provide no information through the contents. Therefore, the interaction between user and media is becoming a major concern. The demand for direct interaction and instant information is much increasing. Digital media environment is no longer expected to serve as a one-way information service, which requires user to search manually on the internet finding information they need. To solve the current inconvenience, an interactive service is needed to provide the information exchange function between people and video contents, or between people themselves. Recently, many researchers have recognized the importance of the requirements for interactive services, but only few services provide interactive video within restricted functionality. Only cooking domain is chosen for an interactive cooking video query service in this research. Cooking is receiving lots of people attention continuously. By using smart media devices, user can easily watch a cooking video. One-way information nature of cooking video does not allow to interactively getting more information about the certain contents, although due to the characteristics of videos, cooking videos provide various information such as cooking scenes and explanation for each recipe step. Cooking video indeed attracts academic researches to study and solve several problems related to cooking. However, just few studies focused on interactive services in cooking video and they still not sufficient to provide the interaction with users. In this paper, an interactive cooking video query service system with linked data to provide the interaction functionalities to users. A linked recipe schema is used to handle the linked data. The linked data approach is applied to construct queries in systematic manner when user interacts with cooking videos. We add some classes, data properties, and relations to the linked recipe schema because the current version of the schema is not enough to serve user interaction. A web crawler extracts recipe information from allrecipes.com. All extracted recipe information is transformed into ontology instances by using developed instance generator. To provide a query function, hundreds of questions in cooking video web sites such as BBC food, Foodista, Fine cooking are investigated and analyzed. After the analysis of the investigated questions, we summary the questions into four categories by question generalization. For the question generalization, the questions are clustered in eleven questions. The proposed system provides an environment associating UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) that allow user to watch cooking videos while obtaining the necessary additional information using extra information layer. User can use the proposed interactive cooking video system at both PC and mobile environments because responsive web design is applied for the proposed system. In addition, the proposed system enables the interaction between user and video in various smart media devices by employing linked data to provide information matching with the current context. Two methods are used to evaluate the proposed system. First, through a questionnaire-based method, computer system usability is measured by comparing the proposed system with the existing web site. Second, the answer accuracy for user interaction is measured to inspect to-be-offered information. The experimental results show that the proposed system receives a favorable evaluation and provides accurate answers for user interaction.