• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.49
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• pp.393-430
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• 2012

In this paper, Bowen's family therapy from the perspective of the theory, narrative analysis of Korean novels, three Regis - tration Subsection.Bowen's description of the individual's behavior is causing problems within the family of anxiety and self-differentiation using two variables. The home if problems or conflicts expressed in these works, the figures showed that the undifferentiated ego at the center of the problem. Undifferentiated ego character felt extreme anxiety when their alienation from the relationship of the family-oriented jeokjangja Undifferentiated ego to relieve anxiety and to consolidate their position in the family relationship, so people were strongly united with each other. Sohyunseongnok, Chossisamdaerok series structures and patterns of a series of domestic problems occur, "mother and son, self-differentiation self undifferentiated undifferentiated ego and self-differentiation mother son, mother and self-ego undifferentiated undifferentiatedcan be subdivided into the son '.Established a symbiotic relationship between them and the U.S. established the presence of a pattern, healer, depending on the deployment method depends narrative. And is divided accordingly, self-determination and to the Son, a son, a son to be born again through repentance of the execution. Depending on the presence or absence healer than what was described on the deployment structure differs. Undifferentiated ego and self undifferentiated mother son family therapist within the family, the problem is solved. Son, a son to repent and be born again, and that caused the problem. Ego Undifferentiated mother and son self-differentiation, undifferentiated ego and self-differentiation mother son home my healer in the absence son committed suicide and executions each tragedy occurred. Personal level, but occurred at home conflicts or problems about this when analyzing the Three-generation stories of the Joseon Dynasty, by applying the theory of Bowen's Family Therapy view dimension in the relationship between family were. Toughness or desire of any one individual, but serious conflicts and problems within the family, the institution of the family itself is the root cause was. And was able to reveal aspects of narrative flow, depending on the presence or absence of family therapists vary significantly depending on his role in the rest of the family comfort and peace determines whether the Three-generation stories of the Joseon Dynasty, received an important narrative of men and axis formation. In a gauze-like situation of this problem in the Three-generation stories of the Joseon Dynasty, a personal desire or toughness in confined without the dimension of the entire family. And extrinsic psychological approach against the background of the wall in the main narrative of the sufferings of women of Korean novels, approached significance.

• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.174-182
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• 2020

The permissible limit of ammonia concentration in drinking water recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 1.5 mg/L. However, in the case of groundwater in Kathmandu, Nepal, the concentration of ammonia fluctuates dramatically from 0 to 120 mg/L at different locations and groundwater depths (Chapagain et al., 2010). Such a high concentration of ammonia causes aesthetic problems in drinking water, such as bad taste and odor; hence, prior treatment is required. In Kathmandu, half of the population utilizes groundwater, which is also employed for drinking water, but owing to a lack of knowledge of household water filters, residents of Kathmandu tend to depend greatly on commercially available jar water than on the installation of a proper household filtration method. Thus, in our study, we employed adsorption and reverse osmosis (RO) as two of the most viable decentralized/household treatment options to address the issue of high contamination of ammonia in drinking water. We evaluated their performances from technical and the economic perspectives using synthetically prepared groundwater at varying ammonia concentrations (50 mg/L and 15 mg/L). Consequently, it was found that adsorption via ion exchange (IE) resin was a comparatively better ammonia removal technology than RO, with 100% ammonia removal even after regeneration; the removal by RO was limited to up to 90%. Furthermore, our study suggests that IE is the most suitable ammonia removal technology for places with lower water consumption (< 50 L/day), whereas RO seemed to be a cost-effective technology for places with higher water consumption, where the daily water demand exceeds 50 L/day. Lastly, these assessments suggest that installing a suitable household treatment system would be more efficient and sustainable from both technical and economic points of view than purchasing commercially bottled water.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.186-200
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• 2023

This study aims to improve the usability of the white cane, which is walking equipment that most local visually impaired people use and carry when going out, and to contribute to the prevention of safety accidents and the walking rights of visually impaired people by providing improvement and resolution measures for the problems identified. Also, this study is a study on the visually impaired, primarily targeting the 1st to 2nd degree visually impaired people, who cannot go out on their own without walking equipment such as a white cane, corresponding to 20% among approximately 250,000 blind and low vision people in the Korean population. In the study process, the concept has been developed from the user's point of view in order that the white cane becomes a real help in the walking step of the visually impaired and the improvement of usability of the white cane, the main walking equipment for the visually impaired, are done by problem identification through the Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking (Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test (verify)). As a result of the investigation in the process of Empathy, a total of five issues was synthesized, including an increase in the proportion of the visually impaired people, an insufficient workforce situation to help all the visually impaired, an improvement and advancement of assistive devices essential for the visually impaired, problems of damage, illegal occupation, demolition, maintenance about braille blocks, making braille block paradigms for the visually impaired and for everyone. In Ideate and Prototype steps, situations derived from brainstorming were grouped and the relationship were made through the KJ method, and specific situations and major causes were organized to establish the direction of the concept. The derived solutions and major functions are defined in four categories, and representative situations requiring solutions and major functions are organized into two user scenarios. Ideas were visualized by arranging the virtual Persona and Customer Journey Map according to the situation and producing a prototype through 3D modeling. Finally, in the evaluation, the final concept derived is a device such a smart cane for guidance for the visually impaired as ① a smart cane emphasizing portability + ② compatibility with other electronic devices + ③ a product with safety and convenience.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.58-71
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• 1981

Thecodiplosis japonesis is sweeping the Pinus densiflora forests from south-west to north-east direction, destroying almost all the aged large trees as well as even the young ones. The front line of infestation is moving slowly but ceaselessly norhwards as a long bottle front. Estimation is that more than 40 percent of the area of P. densiflora forest has been damaged already, however some individuals could escapes from the damage and contribute to restore the site to the previous vegetation composition. When the stands were attacked by this insect, the drastic openings of the upper story of tree canopy formed by exclusively P. densiflora are usually resulted and some environmental factors such as light, temperature, litter accumulation, soil moisture and offers were naturally modified. With these changes after insect invasion, as the time passes, phytosociologic changes of the vegetation are gradually proceeding. If we select the forest according to four categories concerning the history of the insect outbreak, namely, non-attacked (healthy forest), recently damaged (the outbreak occured about 1-2 years ago), severely damaged (occured 5-6 years ago), damage prolonged (occured 10 years ago) and restored (occured about 20 years ago), any directional changes of vegetation composition could be traced these in line with four progressive stages. To elucidate these changes, three survey districts; (1) "Gongju" where the damage was severe and it was outbroken in 1977, (2) "Buyeo" where damage prolonged and (3) "Gochang" as restored, were set, (See Tab. 1). All these were located in the south temperate forest zone which was delimited mainly due to the temporature factor and generally accepted without any opposition at present. In view of temperature, the amount and distribution of precipitation and various soil factor, the overall homogeneity of environmental conditions between survey districts might be accepted. However this did not mean that small changes of edaphic and topographic conditions and microclimates can induce any alteration of vegetation patterns. Again four survey plots were set in each district and inter plot distance was 3 to 4 km. And again four subplots were set within a survey plot. The size of a subplot was $10m{\times}10m$ for woody vegetation and $5m{\times}5m$ for ground cover vegetation which was less than 2 m high. The nested quadrat method was adopted. In sampling survey plots, the followings were taken into account: (1) Natural growth having more than 80 percent of crown density of upper canopy and more than 5 hectares of area. (2) Was not affected by both natural and artificial disturbances such as fire and thinning operation for the past three decades. (3) Lower than 500 m of altitude (4) Less than 20 degrees of slope, and (5) Northerly sited aspect. An intensive vegetation survey was undertaken during the summer of 1980. The vegetation was devided into 3 categories for sampling; the upper layer (dominated mainly by the pine trees), the middle layer composed by oak species and other broad-leaved trees as well as the pine, and the ground layer or the lower layer (shrubby form of woody plants). In this study our survey was concentrated on woody species only. For the vegetation analysis, calculated were values of intensity, frequency, covers, relative importance, species diversity, dominance and similarity and dissimilasity index when importance values were calculated, different relative weights as score were arbitrarily given to each layer, i.e., 3 points for the upper layer, 2 for the middle layer and 1 for the ground layer. Then the formula becomes as follows; $$R.I.V.=\frac{3(IV\;upper\;L.)+2(IV.\;middle\;L.)+1(IV.\;ground\;L.)}{6}$$ The values of Similarity Index were calculated on the basis of the Relative Importance Value of trees (sum of relative density, frequency and cover). The formula used is; $$S.I.=\frac{2C}{S_1+S_2}{\times}100=\frac{2C}{100+100}{\times}100=C(%)$$ Where: C = The sum of the lower of the two quantitative values for species shared by the two communities. $S_1$ = The sum of all values for the first community. $S_2$ = The sum of all values for the second community. In Tab. 3, the species composition of each plot by layer and by district is presented. Without exception, the species formed the upper layer of stands was Pinus densiflora. As seen from the table, the relative cover (%), density (number of tree per $500m^2$), the range of height and diameter at brest height and cone bearing tendency were given. For the middle layer, Quercus spp. (Q. aliena, serrata, mongolica, accutissina and variabilis) and Pinus densiflora were dominating ones. Genus Rhodedendron and Lespedeza were abundant in ground vegetation, but some oaks were involved also. (1) Gongju district The total of woody species appeared in this district was 26 and relative importance value of Pinus densiflora for the upper layer was 79.1%, but in the middle layer, the R.I.V. for Quercus acctissima, Pinus densiflora, and Quercus aliena, were 22.8%, 18.7% and 10.0%, respectively, and in ground vegetation Q. mongolica 17.0%, Q. serrata 16.8% Corylus heterophylla 11.8%, and Q. dentata 11.3% in order. (2) Buyeo district. The number of species enumerated in this district was 36 and the R.I.V. of Pinus densiflora for the uppper layer was 100%. In the middle layer, the R.I.V. of Q. variabilis and Q. serrata were 8.6% and 8.5% respectively. In the ground vegetative 24 species were counted which had no more than 5% of R.I.V. The mean R.I.V. of P.densiflora ( totaling three layers ) and averaging four plots was 57.7% in contrast to 46.9% for Gongju district. (3) Gochang-district The total number of woody species was 23 and the mean R.I.V. of Pinus densiflora was 66.0% showing greater value than those for two former districts. The next high value was 6.5% for Q. serrata. As the time passes since insect outbreak, the mean R.I.V. of P. densiflora increased as the following order, 46.9%, 57.7% and 66%. This implies that P. densiflora was getting back to its original dominat state again. The pooled importance of Genus Quercus was decreasing with the increase of that for Pinus densiflora. This trend was contradict to the facts which were surveyed at Kyonggi-do area (the central temperate forest zone) reported previously (Yim et al, 1980). Among Genus Quercus, Quercus acutissina, warm-loving species, was more abundant in the southern temperature zone to which the present research is concerned than the central temperate zone. But vice-versa was true with Q. mongolica, a cold-loving one. The species which are not common between the present survey and the previous report are Corpinus cordata, Beltala davurica, Wisturia floribunda, Weigela subsessilis, Gleditsia japonica var. koraiensis, Acer pseudosieboldianum, Euonymus japonica var. macrophylla, Ribes mandshuricum, Pyrus calleryana var. faruiei, Tilia amurensis and Pyrus pyrifolia. In Figure 4 and Table 5, Maximum species diversity (maximum H'), Species diversity (H') and Eveness (J') were presented. The Similarity indices between districts were shown in Tab. 5. Seeing Fig. 6, showing two-dimensional ordination of polts on the basis of X and Y coordinates, Ai plots aggregate at the left site, Bi plots at lower site, and Ci plots at upper-right site. The increasing and decreasing patterns as to Relative Density and Relative Importance Value by genus or species were given in Fig. 7. Some of the patterns presented here are not consistent with the previously reported ones (Yim, et al, 1980). The present authors would like to attribute this fact that two distinct types of the insect attack, one is the short war type occuring in the south temperate forest zone, which means that insect attack went for a few years only, the other one is a long-drawn was type observed at the temperate forest zone in which the insect damage went on continuously for several years. These different behaviours of infestation might have resulted the different ways of vegetational change. Analysing the similarity indices between districts, the very convincing results come out that the value of dissimilarity index between A and B was 30%, 27% between B and C and 35% between A and C (Table 6). The range of similarity index was obtained from the calculation of every possible combinations of plots between two districts. Longer time isolation between communities has brought the higher value of dissimilarity index. The main components of ground vegetation, 10 to 20 years after insect outbreak, become to be consisted of mainly Genus Lespedeza and Rhododendron. Genus Quercus which relate to the top dorminant state for a while after insect attack was giving its place to Pinus densiflora. It was implied that, provided that the soil fertility, soil moisture and soil depth were good enough, Genus Quercuss had never been so easily taken ever by the resistant speeies like Pinus densiflora which forms the edaphic climax at vast areas of forest land. Usually they refer Quercus to the representative component of the undisturbed natural forest in the central part of this country.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-44
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• 1973

Needless to say, the management of national forest in all countries is very important in view of the national mission and management purposes. Korean national forest is also in particular significant in promoting national economy for the continuous increasing of the demand for wood, conservation of the land and social welfare. But there's no denying the fact that the leading aim of the Korean forest policy has been based upon the conservation of forest resources and recovery of land conservation function instead of improvement of the forest productive capacity. Therefore, the management of national forest should be aimed as an industry in the chain of the Korean national economy. And the increment of the forest productive capacity based on rationalized forest management is also urgently needed. Not only the increment of the timber production but also the establishment of the good forest in quality and quantity are to bring naturally many functions of conservation and other public benefits. In 1908 Korean national forest was historically established for the first time as a result of the notification for ownership, and was divided into two kinds in 1911-1924, such as indisposable national forest for land conservation, forest management, scientific research and public welfare, and the other national forest to be disposed. Indisposable forest is mostly under the jurisdiction of national forest stations (Chungbu, Tongbu, Nambu), and the tother national forests are under custody of respective cities and provinces, and under custody of the other government authorities. As of the end of 1971, national forest land is 19.5% (1,297,708 ha) of the total forest land area, but growing stock is 50.1% ($35,406,079m^3$) of the total forest growing stock, and timber production of national forest is 23.6% ($205,959m^3$) of the year production of total timber in Korea. Accordingly, it is the important fact that national forest occupies the major part of Korean forestry. The author positively affirms that success or failure of the management of national forest controls rise or fall of forestry in Korea. All functions of forest are very important, but among others the function of timber production is most important especially in Korea, that unavoidably imports a large quantity of foreign wood every year (in 1971 import of foreign wood-$3,756,000m^3$, 160,995,000 dollars). So, Korea urgently needs the improvement of forest productive capacity in national forest. But it is difficult that wood production meets the rapid increase of demand for wood to the development of economy, because production term of forestry is long, so national forest management should be rationalized by the effective investment and development of forestry techniques in the long view. Although Korean national forest business has many difficulties in the budget, techniques and the lack of labour due to outflow of rural village labour by development of national economy, and the increase of labour wages and administrative expenses etc. the development of national forest depends on adoption of the suitable forest techniques and management adapted for social and economical development. In this view point the writer has investigated and analyzed the status of the management of national forest in Korea to examine the irrational problems and suggest an improvement plan. The national forestry statistics cited in this study is based on the basic statistics and the statistics of the forest business as of the end of 1971 published by Office of Forestry, Republic of Korea, and the other depended on the data presented by the national forest stations. The writer wants to propose as follows (seemed to be helpful in improvement of Korean national forest management). 1) In the organization of national forest management, more national forest stations should be established to manage intensively, and the staff of working plan officials should be strengthened because of the importance of working plan. 2) By increasing the staff of protection officials, forest area assigned for each protection official should be decreased to 1,000-2,000 ha. 3) The frequent personnel changes of supervisor of national forest station(the responsible person on-the-spot) obstructs to accomplish the consistent management plan. 4) In the working plan drafting for national forest, basic investigations should be carefully practiced with sufficient expenditure and staff not to draft unreal working plan. 5) The area of working-unit should be decreased to less than 2,000 ha on the average for intensive management and the principle of a working-unit in a forest station should be realized as soon as possible. 6) Reforestation on open land should be completed in a short time with a debt of the special fund(a long term loan), and the land on which growing hardwood stands should be changed with conifers to increase productivity per unit area, and at the same time techical utilization method of hardwood should be developed. 7) Expenses of reforestation should be saved by mechanization and use of chemicals for reforestation and tree nursery operation providing against the lack of labour in future. 8) In forest protection, forest fire damage is enormous in comparison with foreign countries, accordingly prevention system and equipment should be improved, and also the minimum necessary budget should be counted up for establishment and manintenance of fire-lines. 9) Manufacture production should be enlarged to systematize protection, processing and circulation of forest business, and, by doing this, mich benefit is naturally given for rural people. 10) Establishment and arrangement of forest road networks and erosion control work are indispensable for the future development of national forest itself and local development. Therefore, these works should be promoted by the responsibility of general accounting instead of special accounting. 11) Mechanization of forest works should be realized for exploiting hinterlands to meet the demand for timber increased and for solving lack of labour, consequently it should promote import of forest machines, home production, training for operaters and careful adminitration. 12) Situation of labour in future will grow worse. Therefore, the countermeasure to maintain forest labourers and pay attention to public welfare facilities and works should be considered. 13) Although the condition of income and expenditure grows worse because of economical change, the regular expenditure should be fixed. So part of the surplus fund, as of the end of 1971, should be established for the fund, and used for enlarging reforestation and forest road networks(preceding investment in national forest).

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.327-334
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• 2001

Purpose : To find out the role of postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy in the treatment of rectal cancer by comparing survival, pelvic control, complication rate, and any prognostic factor between surgery alone and postoperative radiotherapy group. Materials and methods : From Feb. 1982 to Dec. 1996 total 212 patients were treated by radical surgery with or without postoperative radiotherapy due to rectal carcinoma of modified Astler-Coiler stage $B2\~C3$. Of them, 18 patients had incomplete radiotherapy and so the remaining 194 patients were the database analyzed in this study. One hundred four patients received postoperative radiotherapy and the other 90 patients had surgery only. Radiotherapy was peformed in the range of $39.6\~55.8\;Gy$ (mean: 49.9 Gy) to the whole pelvis and if necessary, tumor bed was boosted by $5.4\~10\;Gy$. Both survival and pelvic control rates were calculated by Kaplan-Meier method and their statistical significance was tested by Log-rank test. Multivariate analysis was peformed by Cox proportional hazards model. Results : 5-year actuarial survival rate (5YSR) and 5-year disease-free survival rate (5YDFSR) of entire patients were $53\%\;and\;49\%$, respectively. 5YSRs of surgery alone group and adjuvant radiotherapy group were $63\%\;vs\;45\%$, respectively (p=0.03). This difference is thought to reflect uneven distribution of stages between two treatment groups (p<0.05 by $\chi^2-test$) with more advanced disease patients in adjuvant radiotherapy group. 5YSRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in MAC B2+3, C1, C2+3 were $68\%\;vs\;55\%$ (p=0.09), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $40\%\;vs\;33\%$ (p=0.71), respectively. 5YDFSRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in above three stages were $65\%\;vs\;49\%$ (p=0.14), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $33\%\;vs\;31\%$ (p=0.46), respectively. 5-year pelvic control rate (5YPCR) of entire patients was $72.5\%$. 5YPCRs of surgery alone and adjuvant radiotherapy group were $71\%\;vs\;74\%$, respectively (p=0.41). 5YPCRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in B2+3, C1, C2+3 were $79\%\;vs\;75\%$ (p=0.88), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $44\%\;vs\;68\%$ (p=0.01), respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that only stage was significant factor affecting overall and disease-free survival in entire patients and also in both treatment groups. In view of pelvic control, stage and operation type were significant in entire patients and only stage in surgery alone group but in adjuvant radiotherapy group, operation type instead of stage was the only significant factor in multivariate analysis as a negative prognostic factor in abdominoperineal resection cases. Conclusion : Our retrospective study showed that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy could improve the pelvic control in MAC C2+3 group. To improve both pelvic control and survival in all patients with MAC B2 or more, other treatment modality such as concurrent continuous infusion of 5-FU, which is the most standard agent, with radiotherapy should be considered.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.27-55
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• 2008

Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2012

In recent years, mobile phone has experienced an extremely fast evolution. It is equipped with high-quality color displays, high resolution cameras, and real-time accelerated 3D graphics. In addition, some other features are includes GPS sensor and Digital Compass, etc. This evolution advent significantly helps the application developers to use the power of smart-phones, to create a rich environment that offers a wide range of services and exciting possibilities. To date mobile AR in outdoor research there are many popular location-based AR services, such Layar and Wikitude. These systems have big limitation the AR contents hardly overlaid on the real target. Another research is context-based AR services using image recognition and tracking. The AR contents are precisely overlaid on the real target. But the real-time performance is restricted by the retrieval time and hardly implement in large scale area. In our work, we exploit to combine advantages of location-based AR with context-based AR. The system can easily find out surrounding landmarks first and then do the recognition and tracking with them. The proposed system mainly consists of two major parts-landmark browsing module and annotation module. In landmark browsing module, user can view an augmented virtual information (information media), such as text, picture and video on their smart-phone viewfinder, when they pointing out their smart-phone to a certain building or landmark. For this, landmark recognition technique is applied in this work. SURF point-based features are used in the matching process due to their robustness. To ensure the image retrieval and matching processes is fast enough for real time tracking, we exploit the contextual device (GPS and digital compass) information. This is necessary to select the nearest and pointed orientation landmarks from the database. The queried image is only matched with this selected data. Therefore, the speed for matching will be significantly increased. Secondly is the annotation module. Instead of viewing only the augmented information media, user can create virtual annotation based on linked data. Having to know a full knowledge about the landmark, are not necessary required. They can simply look for the appropriate topic by searching it with a keyword in linked data. With this, it helps the system to find out target URI in order to generate correct AR contents. On the other hand, in order to recognize target landmarks, images of selected building or landmark are captured from different angle and distance. This procedure looks like a similar processing of building a connection between the real building and the virtual information existed in the Linked Open Data. In our experiments, search range in the database is reduced by clustering images into groups according to their coordinates. A Grid-base clustering method and user location information are used to restrict the retrieval range. Comparing the existed research using cluster and GPS information the retrieval time is around 70~80ms. Experiment results show our approach the retrieval time reduces to around 18~20ms in average. Therefore the totally processing time is reduced from 490~540ms to 438~480ms. The performance improvement will be more obvious when the database growing. It demonstrates the proposed system is efficient and robust in many cases.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.63-86
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• 2010

Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.