• Title/Summary/Keyword: flexible-use

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Effects of HapKok (LI-4) , SamUmGyo (SP-6) Acupuncture on Uterine Motility and Cyclooxygenase-2 Manifestation in Rats (합곡(合谷), 삼음교(三陰交) 자침(刺鍼)이 백서(白鼠) 자궁(子宮) 운동(運動) 및 Cyclooxygenase-2 발현(發現)에 미치는 영향(影響))

  • Lee, Byung-Chul;Lee, Ho-Sub;Kim, Kyung-Sik;Lee, Geon-Mok;Na, Chang-Soo;Kim, Jung-Sang;Hwang, Woo-Jun
    • Journal of Acupuncture Research
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.187-208
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    • 2000
  • By the activation of ovary hormone, many morphological changes occur in the epithelial cell lines and muscle cells in rat uterus. These two cells in uterus are important to the implantation of embryo, maintaining pregnancy and starting parturition. One important change associated with the morphological change of these two cells in uterus is the change on prostaglandin(PG) metabolism. Its presence and synthesis in endometriurn and myometrium in uterus affects estrous cycle and the start of embryo implantation in uterus. It also performs as an important modulator in parturition. So the abnormally weak expression of PG causes difficulty during labor and over-expression causes pre-term labor. PG biosynthesis starts from either free or liberated arachidonic acids from membrane phospholipid by phospholipase. Such arachidonic acids are converted into PG catalyzed by Cyclooxygenase. Under normal physiological condition, Cyclooxygenase-1(COX-1) having 602 units of amino acids controls the synthesis of PG. It acts as a local hormone regulating vasomodulation of blood flow, flexible muscle movement, increasing the blood permeability and contributing the protective role in preserving integrity of the stomach lining and Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is induced by the inflammation, pregnancy and increased its expression until parturition. Lipid metabolite like PG is located in uterine and expression of COX-2 increased with pregnancy. Increased expression of COX proteins in epithelial cells and myometrial cells are told to increase the muscle contractility in uterus but decreased right after the labor in rat. It is a good sign indicating that COX proteins are deeply related to the start of labor. Currently, Several studies report the use of PG and COX-2 inhibitor as medication for controlled abortion or to prevent pre-term labor but they entail various side-effects. Our study proposed to suggest use of acupuncture as an another mediator to control abortion or pre-term labor without causing unnecessary side-effects by those medicines. Two acupuncture sites, LI-4 & SP-6 were selected due to their known efficacy. From the immunohistochemical staining of COX-2, normal expression of COX-2 protein in nonpregnant SD rat's uterus revealed that COX-2 protein was primarily detected in the lumina epithelial lining and in the epithelial cell lining contacting the stromal cells. High resolution optical microscopic scanning revealed distinguishable staining in the myometrial mucosa. LI-4 acupuncture administered nonpregnant rat's uterus showed strong expression for COX-2 in endometrium contacted with lumina epithelial lining of rat uterus and in myometrial mucosa. Stromal cells showed more staining than untreated nonpregnant rat's uterus and stronger staining in stromal cells contacting myometrial layer compared to untreated nonpregnant rat's uterus. SP-6 acupuncture administered nonpregnant rat's uterus showed weak expression for COX-2 in myometrial layers and stromal cells but no staining was visible in lumina epitheliai and glandular epithelial cells. Few stromal cells and myometrial mucosa were positively stained for COX-2. Pregnant SD rat's uterus was also immunostained for COX-2 expression after 18 days of pregnancy. Unlike to untreated nonpregnant rat's uterus, luminal epithelial cells were not positively stained for COX-2 but stronger staining for COX-2 was revealed in stromal cells. LI-4 acupunctured SD rat's uterus had very strong expression of COX-2 in luminal epithelial lining. Few stromal cells showed stronger positive COX-2 staining and myometrial layers also showed more expression than untreated pregnant rat. SP-6 acupuncture administered pregnant SD rat's uterus showed positive expression of COX-2 in epithelial cells of luminal mucosa layer but weaker than that of LI-4 acupuncture treatment's case. However, strong positive staining was revealed in stromal mucosa and myometrial layers. Virgin SD rat's uterus motility index during LI-4 acupuncture was 66.52 % (Prob〉T = 0.0197) compared to its motility before the acupuncture treatment but the motility index was slighdy elevated up to 79.58 % (Prob〉T = 0.1175) after the acupuncture. During the SP-6 acupuncture treatment for 30 minutes, uterus motility index was 90.52 % (Prob〉T = 0.1832) showing lesser decrement but consequently reached similar motility index decreasal to 79.95 % (Prob〉T = 0.0215) after the acupuncture treatment as LI-4 showed. LI-4 acupuncture tend to be a quick treatment to reducing the uterus motility in a virgin rat but eventually both two acupuncture administration created very similar reduction of uterus motility seeing the index after the both acupunctures. The uterus movement monitored during the LI-4 acupuncture administered for 30 minutes, Pregnant SD rat showed decreased motility down to 77.90 % (Prob〉 T = 0.0076) compared to uterus motility before the acupuncture and it continuously decreased down to 71.81 %(Prob〉T = 0.0214) after the removal of needle. The statistical analysis using paired t-test showed significance difference for both two motility indexs at =0.05. SP-6 acupuncture administered to pregnant SD rat also had similar pattern of decreasing uterus motility index down to 74.70 % (Prob〉T = 0.1730) during the initial 30 minutes acupuncture administration and it was continuously lowered to 71.52 % (Prob〉T = 0.0155) after the acupuncture. The paired t-test resuit for SP-6 suggest prompt response of uterus motility index to the SP-6 acupuncture treatment but consequently reached same level of inducing the motility reduction as LI-4 at =0.05 level.

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An Analysis of Big Video Data with Cloud Computing in Ubiquitous City (클라우드 컴퓨팅을 이용한 유시티 비디오 빅데이터 분석)

  • Lee, Hak Geon;Yun, Chang Ho;Park, Jong Won;Lee, Yong Woo
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.45-52
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    • 2014
  • The Ubiquitous-City (U-City) is a smart or intelligent city to satisfy human beings' desire to enjoy IT services with any device, anytime, anywhere. It is a future city model based on Internet of everything or things (IoE or IoT). It includes a lot of video cameras which are networked together. The networked video cameras support a lot of U-City services as one of the main input data together with sensors. They generate huge amount of video information, real big data for the U-City all the time. It is usually required that the U-City manipulates the big data in real-time. And it is not easy at all. Also, many times, it is required that the accumulated video data are analyzed to detect an event or find a figure among them. It requires a lot of computational power and usually takes a lot of time. Currently we can find researches which try to reduce the processing time of the big video data. Cloud computing can be a good solution to address this matter. There are many cloud computing methodologies which can be used to address the matter. MapReduce is an interesting and attractive methodology for it. It has many advantages and is getting popularity in many areas. Video cameras evolve day by day so that the resolution improves sharply. It leads to the exponential growth of the produced data by the networked video cameras. We are coping with real big data when we have to deal with video image data which are produced by the good quality video cameras. A video surveillance system was not useful until we find the cloud computing. But it is now being widely spread in U-Cities since we find some useful methodologies. Video data are unstructured data thus it is not easy to find a good research result of analyzing the data with MapReduce. This paper presents an analyzing system for the video surveillance system, which is a cloud-computing based video data management system. It is easy to deploy, flexible and reliable. It consists of the video manager, the video monitors, the storage for the video images, the storage client and streaming IN component. The "video monitor" for the video images consists of "video translater" and "protocol manager". The "storage" contains MapReduce analyzer. All components were designed according to the functional requirement of video surveillance system. The "streaming IN" component receives the video data from the networked video cameras and delivers them to the "storage client". It also manages the bottleneck of the network to smooth the data stream. The "storage client" receives the video data from the "streaming IN" component and stores them to the storage. It also helps other components to access the storage. The "video monitor" component transfers the video data by smoothly streaming and manages the protocol. The "video translator" sub-component enables users to manage the resolution, the codec and the frame rate of the video image. The "protocol" sub-component manages the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). We use Hadoop Distributed File System(HDFS) for the storage of cloud computing. Hadoop stores the data in HDFS and provides the platform that can process data with simple MapReduce programming model. We suggest our own methodology to analyze the video images using MapReduce in this paper. That is, the workflow of video analysis is presented and detailed explanation is given in this paper. The performance evaluation was experiment and we found that our proposed system worked well. The performance evaluation results are presented in this paper with analysis. With our cluster system, we used compressed $1920{\times}1080(FHD)$ resolution video data, H.264 codec and HDFS as video storage. We measured the processing time according to the number of frame per mapper. Tracing the optimal splitting size of input data and the processing time according to the number of node, we found the linearity of the system performance.

A Study on the Risk Factors for Maternal and Child Health Care Program with Emphasis on Developing the Risk Score System (모자건강관리를 위한 위험요인별 감별평점분류기준 개발에 관한 연구)

  • 이광옥
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.7-21
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    • 1983
  • For the flexible and rational distribution of limited existing health resources based on measurements of individual risk, the socalled Risk Approach is being proposed by the World Health Organization as a managerial tool in maternal and child health care program. This approach, in principle, puts us under the necessity of developing a technique by which we will be able to measure the degree of risk or to discriminate the future outcomes of pregnancy on the basis of prior information obtainable at prenatal care delivery settings. Numerous recent studies have focussed on the identification of relevant risk factors as the Prior infer mation and on defining the adverse outcomes of pregnancy to be dicriminated, and also have tried on how to develope scoring system of risk factors for the quantitative assessment of the factors as the determinant of pregnancy outcomes. Once the scoring system is established the technique of classifying the patients into with normal and with adverse outcomes will be easily de veloped. The scoring system should be developed to meet the following four basic requirements. 1) Easy to construct 2) Easy to use 3) To be theoretically sound 4) To be valid In searching for a feasible methodology which will meet these requirements, the author has attempted to apply the“Likelihood Method”, one of the well known principles in statistical analysis, to develop such scoring system according to the process as follows. Step 1. Classify the patients into four groups: Group $A_1$: With adverse outcomes on fetal (neonatal) side only. Group $A_2$: With adverse outcomes on maternal side only. Group $A_3$: With adverse outcome on both maternal and fetal (neonatal) sides. Group B: With normal outcomes. Step 2. Construct the marginal tabulation on the distribution of risk factors for each group. Step 3. For the calculation of risk score, take logarithmic transformation of relative proport-ions of the distribution and round them off to integers. Step 4. Test the validity of the score chart. h total of 2, 282 maternity records registered during the period of January 1, 1982-December 31, 1982 at Ewha Womans University Hospital were used for this study and the“Questionnaire for Maternity Record for Prenatal and Intrapartum High Risk Screening”developed by the Korean Institute for Population and Health was used to rearrange the information on the records into an easy analytic form. The findings of the study are summarized as follows. 1) The risk score chart constructed on the basis of“Likelihood Method”ispresented in Table 4 in the main text. 2) From the analysis of the risk score chart it was observed that a total of 24 risk factors could be identified as having significant predicting power for the discrimination of pregnancy outcomes into four groups as defined above. They are: (1) age (2) marital status (3) age at first pregnancy (4) medical insurance (5) number of pregnancies (6) history of Cesarean sections (7). number of living child (8) history of premature infants (9) history of over weighted new born (10) history of congenital anomalies (11) history of multiple pregnancies (12) history of abnormal presentation (13) history of obstetric abnormalities (14) past illness (15) hemoglobin level (16) blood pressure (17) heart status (18) general appearance (19) edema status (20) result of abdominal examination (21) cervix status (22) pelvis status (23) chief complaints (24) Reasons for examination 3) The validity of the score chart turned out to be as follows: a) Sensitivity: Group $A_1$: 0.75 Group $A_2$: 0.78 Group $A_3$: 0.92 All combined : 0.85 b) Specificity : 0.68 4) The diagnosabilities of the“score chart”for a set of hypothetical prevalence of adverse outcomes were calculated as follows (the sensitivity“for all combined”was used). Hypothetidal Prevalence : 5% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Diagnosability : 12% 23% 40% 53% 64% 75% 80%.

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Critical Analyses of '2nd Science Inquiry Experiment Contest' (과학탐구 실험대회의 문제점 분석)

  • Paik, Seoung-Hey
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.173-184
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    • 1995
  • The purpose of this study was to analyse the problems of 'Science Inquiry Experiment Contest(SIEC)' which was one of 8 programs of 'The 2nd Student Science Inquiry Olympic Meet(SSIOM)'. The results and conclusions of this study were as follows: 1. It needs to reconsider the role of practical work within science experiment because practical work skills form one of the mainstays in current science. But the assessment of students' laboratory skills in the contest was made little account of. It is necessary to remind of what it means to be 'good at science'. There are two aspects: knowing and doing. Both are important and, in certain respects, quite distinct. Doing science is more of a craft activity, relying more on craft skill and tacit knowledge than on the conscious application of explicit knowledge. Doing science is also divided into two aspects, 'process' and 'skill' by many science educators. 2. The report's and checklist's assessment items were overlapped. Therefore it was suggested that the checklist assessment items were set limit to the students' acts which can't be found in reports. It is important to identify those activities which produce a permanent assessable product, and those which do not. Skills connected with recording and reporting are likely to produce permanent evidence which can be evaluated after the experiment. Those connected with manipulative skills involving processes are more ephemeral and need to be assessed as they occur. The division of student's experimental skills will contribute to the accurate assess of student's scientific inquiry experimental ability. 3. There was a wide difference among the scores of one participant recorded by three evaluators. This means that there was no concrete discussion among the evaluators before the contest. Despite the items of the checklists were set by preparers of the contest experiments, the concrete discussions before the contest were necessary because students' experimental acts were very diverse. There is a variety of scientific skills. So it is necessary to assess the performance of individual students in a range of skills. But the most of the difficulties in the assessment of skills arise from the interaction between measurement and the use. To overcome the difficulties, not only must the mark needed for each skill be recorded, something which all examination groups obviously need, but also a description of the work that the student did when the skill was assessed must also be given, and not all groups need this. Fuller details must also be available for the purposes of moderation. This is a requirement for all students that there must be provision for samples of any end-product or other tangible form of evidence of candidates' work to be submitted for inspection. This is rather important if one is to be as fair as possible to students because, not only can this work be made available to moderators if necessary, but also it can be used to help in arriving at common standards among several evaluators, and in ensuring consistent standards from one evaluator over the assessment period. This need arises because there are problems associated with assessing different students on the same skill in different activities. 4. Most of the students' reports were assessed intuitively by the evaluators despite the assessment items were established concretely by preparers of the experiment. This result means that the evaluators were new to grasp the essence of the established assessment items of the experiment report and that the students' assessment scores were short of objectivity. Lastly, there are suggestions from the results and the conclusions. The students' experimental acts which were difficult to observe because they occur in a flash and which can be easily imitated should be excluded from the assessment items. Evaluators are likely to miss the time to observe the acts, and the students who are assessed later have more opportunity to practise the skill which is being assessed. It is necessary to be aware of these problems and try to reduce their influence or remove them. The skills and processes analysis has made a very useful checklist for scientific inquiry experiment assessment. But in itself it is of little value. It must be seen alongside the other vital attributes needed in the making of a good scientist, the affective aspects of commitment and confidence, the personal insights which come both through formal and informal learning, and the tacit knowledge that comes through experience, both structured and acquired in play. These four aspects must be continually interacting, in a flexible and individualistic way, throughout the scientific education of students. An increasing ability to be good at science, to be good at doing investigational practical work, will be gained through continually, successively, but often unpredictably, developing more experience, developing more insights, developing more skills, and producing more confidence and commitment.

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Studies on the Processing of Chestnut (Castanea pubinervis Schneid) Part 1. Trials on the Raw Material Adaptability for Processing and Colored Products Development (밤(Castanea pubinervis schneid) 가공(加工)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究) 제1보 밤의 가공(加工) 적성(適性) 및 유색(有色) 가공품(加工品) 개발(開發)을 중심(中心)으로)

  • Suh, K.S.;Han, P.J.;Lee, S.J.
    • Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.98-108
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    • 1974
  • Fourteen varieties of Korean chestnut were subjected to the test of adaptability for processing and the possibilities of colored products development. The fruit size of Korean chestnut ranged $11{\sim}18g$ and these small fruits could not be expected to be utilized for the processing of Marron glaces which requires larger size as $25{\sim}30g$. As the storge period is extended the discoloration tendency of chestnut flesh was increasingly developed, however, the fresh chestnut has shown layer-separating phenomenon and ragged surface of fruit which delivers disagreeable appearance to the finished product. The principal factors of discoloration occurred during processing were the behavior of tannin and darkening rate shown on flesh differed each other among varieties; the Chukpa and Yuma variety have exhibited the most serious discoloration and the Taab-b variety, the lightest. Taab-b variety in this connection could be expected to be available for Kanroni processing. For the industrialization of chestnut processing the flame-scorched peeling method is advisable. The capacity of this method is proportional to the square of scorching radius and highly flexible in controlling its performance. As for the processing of colored product, the sugar dehydration and coating and the sugar penetration method demand further study in basical views; however, the canned product of chestnut-redbean has shown the possibility of being utilized as a substitute for or paralleled use with the sugar-syruped canned product which so far has been considered as the only item of export to Japan.

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Studies of Eri-Silk Cultring in Korea (한국피마잠사개발에 대한 연구)

  • 최병희;김재두;박창준
    • Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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    • v.9
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    • pp.49-66
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    • 1969
  • Eri-silkworm is known as a tropical insect where as poly-voltine type in that area. It eats caster oil plant leaves which are cultivated as an every year cultivatable seed oil use in this country, even though it grows for many years in tropical countries. That is why, farmers have freedom for its cultivation in any year if they want. Therefore, eri-silkworm rearing service is flexible for its diet procurment as wish of farmer. The eri-cocoon price or economical fluctuation may be reactable for the rearing work not like as mulberry cocoon. Fortunately, it also eats cynthia tree leaves. Standing from such a easy condition, the authors have studied about this problem since 1963 to develope a culturing method of eri-silkworm rearing in this country and the authors brought out the matters to be produced as an industry scale. Here, the authors summarized their works of the results covering with thirty three work tables. The obtained results are as follows.

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A Case Studies on the Success Factors of Innovative SMEs (혁신 형 중소기업의 성공요인에 관한 사례연구)

  • Kim, Jin-Hee;Kim, Dae-Ho;Kim, Hong
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.65-88
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    • 2008
  • To achieve the age of 30,000 dollars GNP, The business with speed will hold a more crucial point than the business with scale, and the mass consumption market will be transformed and changed into the niche market. Moreover, it will not be easy for the company without the peculiar and creative technology to survive in the severe competition. Under these circumstances, The innovative company which knows how to use this new paradigm will select the better position in the changing market. Innovation type SMEs are contributing in maintaining the international competitiveness of domestic economy by serving high-tech and the promotion of employment. Also, Innovation type SMEs have the most important economic leverage in our domestic economy. It's a source of the growth in domestic economy. Therefore, A lot of countries have been trying to support innovation type SMEs (with a small capital and high-tech). And many countries also try to protect and promote the innovation type SMEs. Especially the Korean government is also promoting innovation type SMEs in many ways, because the future of innovation type SMEs are not bright. This study explored the three innovative SEMs and studied 1) entrepreneur characteristics, 2) the industry environment, 3) competitive strategies, and 4) resources and capabilities of organization, which have been considered as the success factors for entrepreneurial firms. This study also holds that the characteristics of entrepreneurs is one of the most important factor to impact the success of innovative SMEs. Most of entrepreneurs have started their business with high education career and field experiences and have high intentions in developing new/high techonologies, challenging spirits, and clear vision and goals. The innovative SMEs with small kinds of products and services, narrow market, and small resources are more sensitively impacted by the environment especially. But the SMEs which entered into market early could have the comparative excellencies in their market to survive and grow in the future. They also have competitive advantages in the market using differentiation strategies by technology innovation. Technology innovation and differention strategies are one of the success factors in SMEs, They entered into the niche market using this weapons. The capabilities of changing organization to their changing environment, the open orgarnization culture, the continuous employment education, and the building the organic organization are also success factors of innovative SMEs. The SMEs with the simple organization structure can make fast decisions and operate with the autonomous and flexible ways. These only three cases will not shown successful factors of over 12,000 Innovation type SMEs in Korea and this study of Innovation type SMEs is insufficient from all aspects. But this study have many implications for the future research and the entrepreneurs ready for their business.

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Characteristic Trends of Vernacular Design Culture and Products in Post-industrial Society - a case of products: vernacular playing-culture of children and Infants - (후기산업사회의 버내큐러 디자인문화와 산물의 특징적 경향1 - 산물의 실례: 유소년 버내큐러 놀이문화 -)

  • 진선태
    • Archives of design research
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    • v.16 no.2
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    • pp.179-188
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    • 2003
  • We can discover some facts that vernacular design products with a property of volunteer culture coexist with ready-made products as an useful objects in the post-industrial society. Currently, few attempts had been made at studies of the vernacular design objects with understanding cultural context in post-industrial society, it is necessary to illuminate the relationships between the user with a role of design producer and the product viewed in culturally. In chapter 2, by examining documentary, t have been understood the definition, apprehensions, attributes linking creative use's culture with vernacular design culture, and distinctions between vernacular design and main stream design system. In chapter 3, by verifying products of everyday street and construction site, have been investigated the public characters and the differences compared with the past. In chapter 4, as a subtle example, have been analyzed design feathers and cultural characters of the products which children and infants culture generates by reflecting the socio-economic backgrounds and the culture from 60c and 70c to now according to the phases of the times. In conclusion, first, it seems quite probably that all of artificial objects exist a state of ready-made but that is not appropriate to correspond with user's whole behaviors. supplementally, it causes the phenomenon of vernacular design products. Secondly, it is reasonable to suppose that such main-stream design system and vernacular design go forward continually and crossly with coexistent relationships as high culture and sub culture. Third, three concepts: long-life design, ecology design and recycling revealed in vernacular design are useful distinguishing marks for the future design directions, moreover instant-response, fast and flexible process, three distinctions have a possibility of alternative process which can overcome the control-based process such as the systematic approach and the planning MTG in present. Finally, in children and infants culture, vernacular design products have changed the pure style products in the past into the modified techno playing products in the present. These should De a substitute product that supplyes variousness to ready-made design system and a design culture that maintains continually as a independent culture.

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Korea's Optimal Basket Exchange Rate : Thoughts on the Proper Operation of the Market Average Rate Regime (우리나라의 적정(適正)바스켓환율(換率) : 시장평균환율제도(市場平均換率制度)의 운용기준(運用基準) 모색(模索))

  • Oum, Bong-sung
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.111-125
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    • 1990
  • For the last several years, considerable criticism has been leveled against Korea's exchange rate management. While Korea was designated a currency manipulator by the U.S., domestically it is often complained that the won/dollar rate did not adequately reflect changes in Korea's export competitiveness and fluctuations in the exchange rates of major currencies. In view of this situation, Korea changed its exchange regime at the beginning of March this year from the dual currency basket system to a more flexible one, called a "market average rate regime". Under this new regime, the won rate is determined in the exchange market based upon the supply of and demand for foreign exchange and is allowed to freely fluctuate each day within a + 0.4 % range. This paper, first, seeks to evaluate Korea's exchange rate management under the dual basket regime of the 1980s, and then to construct an optimal currency basket for the won which could provide a proper indicator for exchange market intervention under the new market average rate regime. The analysis of fluctuations in the real effective exchange rate (REER) of the won indicates that the won rates in the 1980s failed not only to offset changes in relative prices between home and trading partner countries, but also to properly respond to variations in major exchange rates as further evidenced by sizable fluctuations in the nominal effective rates of the won. In other words, the currency basket regime which was adopted in 1980 for the stabilization of the REER of the won has not been operated properly, mainly because authorities often resorted to policy considerations in determining the won's rate. In the second part of the paper, an optimal currency basket for Korea is constructed, designed to minimize the fluctuations in the REER of the won without including policy considerations as a factor. It is recognized, however, that both domestic and foreign price data are not available immediately for the calculation of the REER. For this problem, the approach suggested by Lipschitz (1980) is followed, in which optimal weights for currencies in the basket are determined based upon the past correlation between price and exchange rates. When the optimal basket is applied to Korea since the mid-80s, it is found that the REER of the won could have been much more stable than it actually was. We also argue for the use of variable weights rather than fixed ones, which would be determined by the changing relationship between exchange rates and relative prices. The optimal basket, and the optimal basket exchange rate based on that basket, could provide an important medium- or long-term reference for proper exchange market intervention under the market average rate regime, together with other factors, such as developments in the current account balance and changes in productivity.

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Standards of Protection in Investment Arbitration for Upcoming Climate Change Cases (기후변화 관련 사건에 적용되는 국제투자중재의 투자자 보호 기준)

  • Kim, Dae-Jung
    • Journal of Arbitration Studies
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.33-52
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    • 2014
  • Although climate change is a global scale question, some concerns have been raised that principles of investment arbitration may not adequately address the domestic implementation of climate change measures. A recent ICSID investment arbitration of Vattenfall v. Germany with regard to the investor's alleged damages from the phase-out of nuclear plants is a salient climate change case. The 2005 Kyoto Protocol was made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and it provides a number of flexible mechanisms such as Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol allows dispute settlement through investor-state arbitration. Any initiation of stricter emission standards can violate the prohibition on expropriations in investment agreements, regardless of the measures created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The effect-based expropriation doctrine can charge changes to existing emission standards as interference with the use of property that goes against the legitimate expectation of a foreign investor. In regulatory chill, threat of investor claims against the host state may preclude the strengthening of climate change measures. Stabilization clauses also have a freezing effect on the hosting state's regulation and a new law applicable to the investment. In the fair and equitable standard, basic expectations of investors when entering into earlier carbon-intensive operations can be affected by a regulation seeking to change into a low-carbon approach. As seen in the Methanex tribunal, a non-discriminatory and public purpose of environmental protection measures should be considered as non-expropriation in the arbitral tribunal unless its decision would intentionally impede a foreign investor's investment.

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