• Korea-Australia Rheology Journal
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.175-184
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• 2008

Chemical engineering (ChE) was conceived at the close of the 19th century as a new discipline which was designed to support then the newly-emerging industries, oil and petrochemical, by supplying the competent engineers equipped with the pertinent engineering fundamentals and skills. It helped the said industries meet the various demands and ramifications of the new pattern of the human civilization spurred by the advent of automobile transportation at the turn of the 20th century. Now ChE once again is ready to fulfill its societal responsibility as probably the most important discipline and profession in sustaining the $21^{st}$ century human civilization providing the needed engineers (ChErs) and technologies. In this study, it is attempted to analyze the role of ChE and ChErs in this context, focusing on the macroeconomic connections embedded in the discipline that allow us to envision the big pictures of the 21st century civilization where the wellbeing of the mankind invariably hinges on five essential industries, i.e., medical, pharmaceutical, energy, environment and materials. It can be argued that ChE is the only discipline that can encompass simultaneously all those five industries indispensable to sustain the 21 st century human civilization that can be termed the era of "enjoy-healthy-living-longer". It is also believed that the historical mission ChE and ChErs are supposed to fulfill now is even bigger than that they took on a hundred years ago and subsequently accomplished with remarkable success in food, clothing, shelter and entertainment industries introducing various technological innovations. The macroeconomic viewpoints are called upon in this study as were in the 2006 article (Hyun, 2006) but focusing on ChE and ChErs this time to view the connections embedded in ChE as the essential components in understanding the historical nature of the role and responsibility of ChE and ChErs. The new paradigm for ChE is also pondered over together with the frequently-cited technology concepts such as IT, BT, NT, ET and ST which are regarded intimately germane to the characteristics and perspectives of the $21^{st}$ century civilization.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.189-207
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the network characteristics of ports and their performance that is represented by port competitiveness for the port operators. The study employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) to evaluate network characteristics comprising four centrality indices. For this research, data from Containerization International Yearbooks for 2006-2011 is used to analyze the service networks of 20 major liner shipping companies. In SNA, nodes (vertices) in the network are the ports and links (edges) in the network are connections realized by vessel movements, such that the liner shipping network determines the port network. In addition, panel regression analysis has been employed to investigate the relationship between port network characteristics and their performance. The results suggest that the four centrality indices identify the roles of the world's major ports from 2006 to 2011 and that port performance is determined not only by macroeconomic variables and service capabilities but also by the eigenvector centrality of ports in networks.