• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2012

This paper is the first paper of two linked papers about the FDI of the economic infrastructure-related public companies. This paper analyzes overseas investments of infrastructure public companies which is characterized by state control and support of socio-economic facilities and services. In theoretical consideration the genealogy and characteristics of FDI are examined, and then global FDI trends since 1970, institutional changes and FDI trends in Korea are analyzed. This analysis shows that the globalization of large state-owned enterprises or public companies from developing and transition economies constitutes an important component of FDI and new emerging source of FDI. Finally the objects and strategies of large 10 infrastructure public companies are analyzed in perspectives of features having both advanced and developing economies type.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.640-656
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• 2005

A chronic depression in the Korean economy, which depends mostly on imported oil, has been attributed partly to rising crude oil prices recently. Against the backdrop of these realities in Korea, Azerbaijan in the Caspian region, with vast oil and gas deposits, has been greeted enviously by some Koreans. Many transition economies, especially on the Caspian region trumpeted by the oil boom, however, are rich in natural resources, but the benefits of those resources are appropriated by the local elite in collusion with foreign companies. Azerbaijan, in particular, is dominated by a series of internal and external patronage networks. Foreign capital nourishes those networks surrounding President Aliev. Thus, the case of Azerbaijan shows that resource rents in the transition economies sometimes do not help in improving the living conditions of ordinary people. Rather rich resource rents turn out to be a major impediment to the emerging development of the transition economy, lessening the incentives to reform in the country. The result was the possibility of the so-called Dutch Disease, in which disproportionate growth in a certain energy sector tends to crowd out investment in other sectors of the economy.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.468-512
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• 2023

Sustainable Information Technology (IT) and Sustainable Information Systems (IS) were synonymous with Green IT-IS until recently the studies focused on sustainable IT-IS encompassing the interaction between economy, society, and environment. Here, is an attempt to understand the development in the emerging field of Sustainable IT-IS from Green IT-Green IS. The studies in the area of Sustainable IT-IS spare address diverse topics. This study attempts to provide a framework for the field of research and indicate potential research directions in the sustainable IT-IS domain. A detailed comparative analysis approach of 296 papers has been used to understand the progress of management research in Sustainable IT-IS vis-à-vis Green IT-IS. The review analyses the collated literature to understand the trends across the study period, development across various economies/ geographies, methodological approaches used, behavioral and theoretical aspects investigated, and finally, develop a taxonomy based on identified theses in the field of study. The study highlights that developed countries focus more on studies on the Sustainable IT-IS domain compared to other economies. It was evident that sustainable IS has received very limited focus. The study identifies 7 major themes and 29 subthemes forming the area of study during the evolution of Sustainable IT-IS through Green IT-IS. Subsequently, taxonomy was proposed to identify future research initiatives for investigation. The review comparing the evolution of research on managerial issues on Sustainable IT-IS vis-à-vis Green IT-IS is provided perhaps for the first time. The study provides an avenue for future research in the upcoming domain of Sustainable IT-IS.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.159-164
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• 2009

Coronary artery disease is on the rise over the world. Myocardial perfusion SPECT is a well established technique to detect coronary artery disease and to assess left ventricular function. In addition, it has the unique ability to predict the prognosis of the patients. Moreover, the application of ECC-gated images provided the quantitatve data and improved the accuracy. This approach has been proved to be cost-effective and suitable for the emerging economies as well as developed countries. However, the utilization of nuclear cardiology procedures vary widely considering the different countries and region of the world. Korea exits 2-3 times less utilization than Japan, and 20 times than the United States. Recently, with the emerging of new technology, namely cardiac CT, cardiac MR and stress echocardiography, the clinical usefulness of nuclear cardiology has been called in question and its role has been redefined. For the proper promotion of nuclear cardiology, special educations should be conducted since the nuclear cardiology has the contact points between nuclear medicine and cardiology. Several innovations are in horizon which will impact the diagnostic accuracy as well as imaging time and cost savings. Development of new tracers, gamma camera technology and hybrid systems will open the new avenue in cardiac imaging. The future of nuclear cardiology based on molecular imaging is very exciting. The newly defined biologic targets involving atherosclerosis and vascular vulnerability will allow the answers for the key clinical questions. Hybrid techniques including SPECT/CT indicate the direction in which clinical nuclear cardiology may be headed in the immediate future. To what extent nuclear cardiology will be passively absorbed by other modalities, or will actively incorporate other modalities, is up to the present and next generation of nuclear cardiologists.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.307-310
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• 2020

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has placed unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems, even in advanced economies. While the number of cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Africa compared to other continents has so far been low, there are concerns about under-reporting, inadequate diagnostic tools, and insufficient treatment facilities. Moreover, proactiveness on the part of African governments has been under scrutiny. For instance, issues have emerged regarding the responsiveness of African countries in closing international borders to limit trans-continental transmission of the virus. Overdependence on imported products and outsourced services could have contributed to African governments' hesitation to shut down international air and seaports. In this era of emerging and re-emerging pathogens, we recommend that African nations should consider self-sufficiency in the health sector as an urgent priority, as this will not be the last outbreak to occur. In addition to the Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement fund (US$600 million) provided by the World Bank for strengthening health systems and disease surveillance, each country should further establish an epidemic emergency fund for epidemic preparedness and response. We also recommend that epidemic surveillance units should create a secure database of previous and ongoing pandemics in terms of aetiology, spread, and treatment, as well as financial management records. Strategic collection and analysis of data should also be a central focus of these units to facilitate studies of disease trends and to estimate the scale of requirements in preparation and response to any future pandemic or epidemic.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.181-193
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• 2020

This study examines the relationship between gender diversity (women on the board and women on the audit committee) and a firm's financial stability. The ordinary least square analysis was used to determine the relationship. To measure the financial stability of Malaysian suspect firms, i.e., firms with the lowest positive earnings, the Altman (1993) Z-Score measurement was utilized. The results indicate that women on the board are significantly and negatively associated with the firm's financial stability. That is, they are related to low financial stability, which contradicts the agency and resource dependence theories. Regarding women directors on the audit committee, there is no significant relationship with financial stability, meaning that they cannot protect the company against financial distress. These results are robust and do not change when using different measurements of gender diversity, one-year lag of independent variables, and other methods of analysis, namely random effect panel data. This study is the first to alert policymakers, stakeholders, researchers, and society in general to the need to re-evaluate and strengthen the role of women directors in improving firms' financial stability, particularly in emerging economies like Malaysia.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.683-692
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• 2020

The primary purpose of the study is to investigate the volatility spillovers from global economic policy uncertainty and macroeconomic factors to the Islamic stock market returns. The study focuses on the Islamic stock indices of emerging economies including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey. The Macroeconomic factors are industrial production, consumer price index, exchange rate. EGARCH model is employed for investigation of volatility spillovers. The results show that the global economic policy uncertainty has a significant spillover effect only on the returns of Turkish Islamic stock index. Similarly, the shocks in macroeconomic factors have little influence on the volatility of Islamic indices returns. The volatility of Indonesian and the Turkish Islamic stock indices returns is not influenced from the fluctuations in macroeconomic factors. However, there is significant volatility spillover only from industrial production to the returns of Malaysian Islamic index. The results suggest that the Islamic stock markets are less likely to influence from the global economic policies and macroeconomic factors. The stability of Islamic stocks provide opportunity for diversification of portfolios, particularly in stressed market conditions. The major price factors of Islamic markets could be firms' specific factors or investors' behaviors. The findings are helpful for policy makers and investors in formulating policies and portfolios.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.73-84
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• 2020

The paper investigates the effect of the factors on the disclosure of sustainable development information of enterprises. The research sample includes 120 manufacturing companies listed on Vietnam stock market in 2019. This research uses ordinary least squares (OLS) to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. The empirical results show that five variables have a statistically significant positive effect on disclosure of sustainable development information of manufacturing companies, including firm size (SIZE), independence of board of directors (BOD), foreign ownership (FRO), return on equity (ROE), and financial leverage (LEV). The results indicate that state ownership (STO) has a statistically significant negative effect on disclosure of sustainable development information of manufacturing companies listed on Vietnam stock market. Besides, the research results also show there is a large difference in the disclosure of sustainable development information between listed companies in Vietnam, those of other emerging economies in the region, and the companies in developed markets. Therefore, this paper provides a new insight to managers and related parties on how to improve the firm's sustainability disclosure to bring benefit for the firm itself and the stakeholders by reasonable decisions about the factors that affect disclosure of sustainable development information.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.17-44
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• 2015

Due to the oil business, settlements in the Gulf Region developed into prosperous cities. But in the near future, oil is off. The plans of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states bank on diversified and knowledge-intensive economies. Are those development plans realistic? What is the state of the art of knowledge institutions in the GCC countries? Applying the theoretical frameworks of Knowledge City and Science Indicators research, we empirically and theoretically studied the emerging Gulf cities Kuwait City (Kuwait), Manama (Bahrain), Doha (Qatar), Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah (all UAE), and Muscat (Oman). Our methodological framework includes grounded theory, ethnographic field study, ServQual-like quantitative questionnaires and semi-standardized qualitative interviews conducted on-site with informed people, informetrics, and, finally, the use of official statistics. In particular, we describe and analyze the cities' knowledge infrastructures, their academics, and expenditure on R&D as input indicators; and publications as well as graduates as output indicators. A further crucial aspect of a knowledge society is the transition of graduates into knowledge-intensive public services and private companies.

• Korean Journal of Plant Tissue Culture
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.325-337
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• 2000

All living organisms depend on soil and water for their sustained growth and development. In recent years, sustenance of life in these growth matrices has been adversely affected by the cumulative increase in environmental pollutants resulting from increasing population, growing economies and resource-use. This review provides a glimpse into the problem of global environmental pollution, the traditional technologies available for remediation and the scope of emerging‘plant-based remediation’technologies. Phytoremediation, the use of plants to effectively remove or stabilize contaminants from the growth substrate, is a low cost and ecologically friendly alternative to the common‘dig and dump’technologies. The field of phytoremediation has been driven by the intrinsic need for identification of ideal candidate plant species. To date, there are only a very few identified plants which satisfy all of the prerequisites for use in phytoremediation. The review focuses on one such plant species, the common horticultural plant scented geranium (Pelargonium sp.), with demonstrated potential to remediate metal / salt contaminated soils / aqueous systems. The characterization of tolerance and metal / salt accumulation potential of Pelargonium sp. and its efficacy in remediating complex contaminated sites are described. The unique ability of scented geraniums to tolerate excessive amounts of multi-metals, hydrocarbon and salt mixtures, and at the same time to accumulate significant amounts of metal and salt ions in the biomass, renders this plant species as one of the ideal candidates for remediation.