• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.9-16
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• 2011

With the confirmation of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and as cheap foreign agricultural products are beginning to be freely distributed in Korea, the government has taken a greater interest in securing the competitiveness of domestic agriculture. Accordingly, the Korean government has presented plans to advance the interests of 'small but strong farmers' and secure their competitiveness in line with the agricultural conditions in Korea. The government also announced that it will focus on leading these efforts in rural areas. The main thrust of this plan to support 'small but strong farmers' focuses onutilizing advanced peripheral technologies such as IT and BT; however, there are only a few Information Management Division centers currentlyoperating across the nation, and these are mainly in the IT-related divisions of the Agricultural Research and Extension Services and Agricultural Technology Centers. Therefore, in this study, we used the responses from a survey of farmers to identify regional differences in informatization levels and the digital divide among 'small but strong farmers' according to the presence or absence of an Information Management Division center. As a result, we found that the 'small but strong farmers' in regions with an active Information Management Division center received more IT services and had a higher level of informatization. Thus, to increase the use of IT-related peripheral technology by these 'small but strong farmers', it is important to maintain or increase the number of Information Management Division centers.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.29-48
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• 2007

In these days. we can draw many benefits from information and information technology but some side effects threatening information society have arisen. This study aims to examine information divide and internet addiction as dysfunction of information society, Until now. public libraries have little to do with these serious problems So this study suggests new roles of public libraries to tackle information divide and internet addiction.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.185-189
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• 2017

This paper proposes a low power frequency divider for an integrated CMOS phase-locked loop (PLL). An injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) was designed, along with a current-mode logic (CML) frequency divider in order to obtain a broadband and high-frequency operation. A ring oscillator was designed to operate at 1.2 GHz, and the ILFD was used to divide the frequency of its input signal by two. The structure of the ILFD is similar to that of the ring oscillator in order to ensure the frequency alignment between the oscillator and the ILFD. The CML frequency divider was used as the second stage of the divider. The proposed frequency divider was applied in a conventional PLL design, using a 0.18 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process. Simulation shows that the proposed divide-by-two ILFD and the divide-by-eight CML frequency dividers operated as expected for an input frequency of 1.2 GHz, with a power consumption of 30 mW.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.493-506
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• 2018

This study analyzes factors that determine the usage of digital information by senior consumers in the mobile environment. Senior consumers are alienated from digital information in South Korea; therefore, there have been increasing attempts to resolve this digital divide and reduce the digital information usage gap between young adults and senior consumers. The study used panel data from the National Information Society Agency (2017); there were 1,463 participants, aged 50-79 years. SPSS 19.0 was used to conduct the statistical analyses for frequency, factor analysis, Cronbach' ${\alpha}$ analysis, descriptive analysis and hierarchical multiple-regression analysis. The results are as follows. First, negative attitude toward information society negatively influenced the mobile digital information usage in diversity context. Second, average monthly income, degree of digital device usage motivation, positive attitude toward digital device usage, digital literacy of PC & Mobile, and family support positively influenced the mobile digital information usage in diversity context. Third, negative attitudes toward information society negatively influenced the mobile digital information usage in quality context. Forth, average monthly income, degree of digital device usage motivation, positive attitude toward digital device usage, digital literacy of PC & mobile, and family support positively influenced the mobile digital information usage in quality context. The study results can help further understand mobile usage behaviors among senior citizens and the implications on their quality of life in the digital information era.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.11
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• pp.1644-1649
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• 2018

Aiming at infrared thermal images with different buried depth defects, we study a variety of image segmentation algorithms based on the threshold to develop global search ability and the ability to find the defect area accurately. Firstly, the iterative thresholding method, the maximum entropy method, the minimum error method, the Ostu method and the minimum skewness method are applied to image segmentation of the same infrared thermal image. The study shows that the maximum entropy method and the minimum error method have strong global search capability and can simultaneously extract defects at different depths. However none of these five methods can accurately calculate the defect area at different depths. In order to solve this problem, we put forward a strategy of "divide and conquer". The infrared thermal image is divided into several local thermal maps, with each map containing only one defect, and the defect area is calculated after local image processing of the different buried defects one by one. The results show that, under the "divide and conquer" strategy, the iterative threshold method and the Ostu method have the advantage of high precision and can accurately extract the area of different defects at different depths, with an error of less than 5%.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.19-27
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• 2022

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly changed the Lifeline Program, a telecommunications rate discount program for low-income Americans. As the reliance on online activities such as remote work, distance education, and online shopping grows because of the spread of COVID-19, there is a concern that the digital divide will widen among low-income households that struggle to access internet infrastructure due to the burden of access rates. Accordingly, the US Congress passed a bill to help lower the internet bill for low-income households using the government budget to close the digital divide. The Lifeline Program, which is a part of the universal service obligation, has been in charge of the telecommunications rate discount for low-income households. However, according to the new law, the internet rate discount program based on the government budget was implemented beginning in 2021. As the internet rate discount based on the government budget begins, the US telecommunication rate discount system is transitioning from a system in which telecommunication industry support was borne by operators to one in which public support from the government budget will play a significant role. In this paper, we will look at recent changes in the US telecommunications rate discount program and their implications.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2020.06a
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• pp.115-115
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• 2020

Water network partitioning (WNP) is an initiative technique to divide the original water distribution network (WDN) into several sub-networks with only sparse connections between them called, District Metered Areas (DMAs). Operating and managing (O&M) WDN through DMAs is bringing many advantages, such as quantification and detection of water leakage, uniform pressure management, isolation from chemical contamination. The research of WNP recently has been highlighted by applying different methods for dividing a network into a specified number of DMAs. However, it is an open question on how to determine the optimal number of DMAs for a given network. In this study, we present a method to divide an original WDN into DMAs (called Clustering) based on community structure algorithm for auto-creation of suitable DMAs. To that aim, many hydraulic properties are taken into consideration to form the appropriate DMAs, in which each DMA is controlled as uniform as possible in terms of pressure, elevation, and water demand. In a second phase, called Sectorization, the flow meters and control valves are optimally placed to divide the DMAs, while minimizing the pressure reduction. To comprehensively evaluate the WNP performance and determine optimal number of DMAs for given WDN, we apply the framework of multiple-criteria decision analysis. The proposed method is demonstrated using a real-life benchmark network and obtained permissible results. The approach is a decision-support scheme for water utilities to make optimal decisions when designing the DMAs of their WDNs.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.118-127
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• 2024

Commonly deep learning methods for enhancing the quality of medical images use unpaired dataset due to the impracticality of acquiring paired dataset through commercial imaging system. In this paper, we propose a supervised learning method to enhance the quality of ultrasound images. The U-net model is designed by incorporating a divide-and-conquer approach that divides and processes an image into four parts to overcome data shortage and shorten the learning time. The proposed model is trained using paired dataset consisting of 828 pairs of low-quality and high-quality images with a resolution of 512x512 pixels obtained by varying the number of channels for the same subject. Out of a total of 828 pairs of images, 684 pairs are used as the training dataset, while the remaining 144 pairs served as the test dataset. In the test results, the average Mean Squared Error (MSE) was reduced from 87.6884 in the low-quality images to 45.5108 in the restored images. Additionally, the average Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) was improved from 28.7550 to 31.8063, and the average Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) was increased from 0.4755 to 0.8511, demonstrating significant enhancements in image quality.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.325-338
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• 2015

Telemedicine, which gives or receives medical information via ICT (information and communication technology), is regarded as innovation in a medical field and its application is various according to offline conditions. For example, the utilization of telemedicine in Korea is unfair because of the administrative discretion, which is the basic unit of telemedicine for its practical operation, in spite of the same diagnostic area. With this mind, this study investigates the cause of regional differences of telemedicine through a case of Kangwon province. Furthermore, the crucial matter is that regional differences of telemedicine are associated with digital divide; therefore, this research considers digital divide triggered by telemedicine. The core results are as follows. First, there are little measures such as increase of the staff, economic compensation for public officials, education of telemedicine facilities; accordingly, only regions, where can accept these insufficient conditions, manage the telemedicine system. Second, the interesting of a mayor or a governor and a head of a health center as a highest decision maker has something to do with different utilization of telemedicine. Third, public health doctors play a role as practical operators in telemedicine, but their stance is skeptic about telemedicine somewhat because of the relationship with the medical association opposing the implementation of telemedicine, unimproved regional health care condition, etc. Forth, it seems that the digital divide caused by the regional differences of the present telemedicine utilization does not led to tangible results and is not turned to another disparity so far, the proper measures are required considering that various health care services based on telemedicine will be extended.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.81-89
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• 2014

Owing to recent advanced techniques in information and communication technology(ICT), our daily life has been changing very quickly and our life style has also been affected greatly. In the current knowledge and information society, the disabled can have a right to enjoy benefits of advanced ICT technologies. However, there is a barrier called digital divide so that the disabled have some difficulties to communicate to the world with ICT technologies. In this sense, our job is to close digital divide and let the disabled enjoy benefits of ICT technologies. Recently there have been some research works to close digital divide between the disabled and the non-disabled. Among various attempts to close digital divide, improving web accessibility for the disabled is the biggest concern since web is a still representative tool among ICT tools. The purpose of this paper is to propose some practical guidelines for improving web accessibility for the disabled. The proposed improvement guidelines are developed based on the existing web accessibility guidelines and are upgraded for more adaptable to the disabled. Our principles are based on the following philosophy. First, any input transmission must be more confirmed. Second, prevent any instant request. Third, allow the disabled to record or store the contents if necessary. Fourth, reduce physical movement for the disabled. Fifth, provide more interaction tools for the disabled.