• Title/Summary/Keyword: measurement time

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Changes of Microbial Activity and Physicochemical Environment during Composting of Papermill Sludge in a Pilot Plant (제지슬럿지의 퇴비화 과정 중 미생물활성 및 이화학적 환경변화)

  • Chung, Young-Ryun;Chung, Man-Hoon;Han, Shin-Ho;Oh, Say-Kyun
    • Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.79-89
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    • 1995
  • Changes of microbial activity and physicochemical environment during composting of papermill sludge(PMS) in the pilot plant equipped with an agitated bed reactor were monitored for establishing the efficient composting system. Microbial activity determined as the evolution of $CO_2$ increased for the first 10 days after introduction of PMS to the reactor and decreased thereafter. Population changes of microorganisms in the reactor-PMS were not typical as in windrow system. The ratio of thermophilic bacteria to mesophilic bacteria, however, increased slowly even 23 days after introduction. Temperature of PMS increased rapidly from the first day and reached $62^{\circ}C$ at 7 days after introduction and decreased slowly thereafter. The acidity of PMS was pH 6.8 initially, increased to pH 8.0 after 7 days and decreased to pH 7.4 after 23 days. Redox potential(Eh) of PMS was -320mV at the beginning of composting, but it was increased with time to reach -15mV after 23 days composting. However, Eh of PMS pre-sterilized before measurement was average 50mV, regardless of composting periods indicating the major role of microorganisms during composting process. Water content of PMS was 67% initially and decreased to about 50% after 23 days composting in the reactor. Less than 13 days-old compost inhibited growth of radish in the container mixture with bed soil. Based on statistical analysis of microbial and physicochemical parameters of PMS during composting, an equation was developed for determining compost maturity. A number of experiments using various organic wastes are required before application of the formular to the practical use.

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Temperature Compensation of Optical FBG Sensors Embedded Tendon for Long-term Monitoring of Tension Force of Ground Anchor (광섬유 센서 내장형 텐던을 이용한 그라운드 앵커의 장기 장력모니터링을 위한 온도보상)

  • Sung, Hyun-Jong;Kim, Young-Sang;Kim, Jae-Min;Park, Gui-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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    • v.28 no.5
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    • pp.13-25
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    • 2012
  • Ground anchor method is one of the most popular reinforcing technology for slope in Korea. For the health monitoring of slope which is reinforced by permanent anchor for a long period, monitoring of the tension force of ground anchor is very important. However, since electromechanical sensors such as strain gauge and V/W type load cell are also subject to long-term risk as well as suffering from noise during long distance transmission and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI), optical FBG sensors embedded tendon was developed to measure strain of 7-wire strand by embedding FBG sensor into the center king cable of 7-wire strand. This FBG sensors embedded tendon has been successfully applied to measuring the short-term anchor force. But to adopt this tendon to long-term monitoring, temperature compensation of the FBG sensors embedded tendon should be done. In this paper, we described how to compensate the effect in compliance with the change of underground temperature during long-term tension force monitoring of ground anchors by using optical fiber sensors (FBG: Fiber Bragg Grating). The model test was carried out to determine the temperature sensitivity coefficient (${\beta}^{\prime}$) of FBG sensors embedded tendon. The determined temperature sensitivity coefficient ${\beta}^{\prime}=2.0{\times}10^{-5}/^{\circ}C$ was verified by comparing the ground temperatures predicted from the proposed sensor using ${\beta}^{\prime}$ with ground temperatures measured from ground thermometer. Finally, temperature compensations were carried out based on ${\beta}^{\prime}$ value and ground temperature measurement from KMA for the tension force monitoring results of tension type and compression type anchors, which had been installed more than 1 year before at the test site. Temperature compensated tension forces are compared with those measured from conventional load cell during the same measuring time. Test results show that determined temperature sensitivity coefficient (${\beta}^{\prime}$) of FBG sensors embedded tendon is valid and proposed temperature compensation method is also appropriate from the fact that the temperature compensated tension forces are not dependent on the change of ground temperature and are consistent with the tension forces measured from the conventional load cell.

The Impacts of Smoking Bans on Smoking in Korea (금연법 강화가 흡연에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Beomsoo;Kim, Ahram
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.31 no.2
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    • pp.127-153
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    • 2009
  • There is a growing concern about potential harmful effect of second-hand or environmental tobacco smoking. As a result, smoking bans in workplace become more prevalent worldwide. In Korea, workplace smoking ban policy become more restrictive in 2003 when National health enhancing law was amended. The new law requires all office buildings larger than 3,000 square meters (multi-purpose buildings larger than 2,000 square meters) should be smoke free. Therefore, a lot of indoor office became non smoking area. Previous studies in other counties often found contradicting answers for the effects of workplace smoking ban on smoking behavior. In addition, there was no study in Korea yet that examines the causal impacts of smoking ban on smoking behavior. The situation in Korea might be different from other countries. Using 2001 and 2005 Korea National Health and Nutrition surveys which are representative for population in Korea we try to examine the impacts of law change on current smoker and cigarettes smoked per day. The amended law impacted the whole country at the same time and there was a declining trend in smoking rate even before the legislation update. So, the challenge here is to tease out the true impact only. We compare indoor working occupations which are constrained by the law change with outdoor working occupations which are less impacted. Since the data has been collected before (2001) and after (2005) the law change for treated (indoor working occupations) and control (outdoor working occupations) groups we will use difference in difference method. We restrict our sample to working age (between 20 and 65) since these are the relevant population by the workplace smoking ban policy. We also restrict the sample to indoor occupations (executive or administrative and administrative support) and outdoor occupations (sales and low skilled worker) after dropping unemployed and someone working for military since it is not clear whether these occupations are treated group or control group. This classification was supported when we examined the answers for workplace smoking ban policy existing only in 2005 survey. Sixty eight percent of indoor occupations reported having an office smoking ban policy compared to forty percent of outdoor occupation answering workplace smoking ban policy. The estimated impacts on current smoker are 4.1 percentage point decline and cigarettes per day show statistically significant decline of 2.5 cigarettes per day. Taking into account consumption of average sixteen cigarettes per day among smokers it is sixteen percent decline in smoking rate which is substantial. We tested robustness using the same sample across two surveys and also using tobit model. Our results are robust against both concerns. It is possible that our measure of treated and control group have measurement error which will lead to attenuation bias. However, we are finding statistically significant impacts which might be a lower bound of the true estimates. The magnitude of our finding is not much different from previous finding of significant impacts. For cigarettes per day previous estimates varied from 1.37 to 3.9 and for current smoker it showed between 1%p and 7.8%p.

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A Study on the Consumer's Service Quality Perception Based on the Types of Life-style (소비자의 라이프스타일에 따른 서비스품질 지각 차이에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Yoon-Seo;Lee, Seung-In;Choi, In
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.53-67
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    • 2009
  • For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

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The intrinsic instabilities of fluid flow occured in the melt of Czochralski crystal growth system

  • Yi, Kyung-Woo;Koichi Kakimoto;Minoru Eguchi;Taketoshi Hibiya
    • Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
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    • 1996.06a
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    • pp.179-200
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    • 1996
  • The intrinsic instabilities of fluid flow occurred in the melt of the Czochralski crystal growth system Czochralski method, asymmetric flow patterns and temperature profiles in the melt have been studied by many researchers. The idea that the non-symmetric structure of the growing equipment is responsible for the asymmetric profiles is usually accepted at the first time. However further researches revealed that some intrinsic instabilities not related to the non-symmetric equipment structure in the melt could also appear. Ristorcelli had pointed out that there are many possible causes of instabilities in the melt. The instabilities appears because of the coupling effects of fluid flow and temperature profiles in the melt. Among the instabilities, the B nard type instabilities with no or low crucible rotation rates are analyzed by the visualizing experiments using X-ray radiography and the 3-D numerical simulation in this study. The velocity profiles in the Silicon melt at different crucible rotation rates were measured using X-ray radiography method using tungsten tracers in the melt. The results showed that there exits two types of fluid flow mode. One is axisymmetric flow, the other is asymmetric flow. In the axisymmetric flow, the trajectory of the tracers show torus pattern. However, more exact measurement of the axisymmetrc case shows that this flow field has small non-axisymmetric components of the velocity. When fluid flow is asymmetric, the tracers show random motion from the fixed view point. On the other hand, when the observer rotates to the same velocity of the crucible, the trajectory of the tracer show a rotating motion, the center of the motion is not same the center of the melt. The temperature of a point in the melt were measured using thermocouples with different rotating rates. Measured temperatures oscillated. Such kind of oscillations are also measured by the other researchers. The behavior of temperature oscillations were quite different between at low rotations and at high rotations. Above experimental results means that the fluid flow and temperature profiles in the melt is not symmetric, and then the mode of the asymmetric is changed when rotation rates are changed. To compare with these experimental results, the fluid flow and temperature profiles at no rotation and 8 rpm of crucible rotation rates on the same size of crucible is calculated using a 3-dimensional numerical simulation. A finite different method is adopted for this simulation. 50×30×30 grids are used. The numerical simulation also showed that the velocity and flow profiles are changed when rotation rates change. Futhermore, the flow patterns and temperature profiles of both cases are not axisymmetric even though axisymmetric boundary conditions are used. Several cells appear at no rotation. The cells are formed by the unstable vertical temperature profiles (upper region is colder than lower part) beneath the free surface of the melt. When the temperature profile is combined with density difference (Rayleigh-B nard instability) or surface tension difference (Marangoni-B nard instability) on temperature, cell structures are naturally formed. Both sources of instabilities are coupled to the cell structures in the melt of the Czochralski process. With high rotation rates, the shape of the fluid field is changed to another type of asymmetric profile. Because of the velocity profile, isothermal lines on the plane vertical to the centerline change to elliptic. When the velocity profiles are plotted at the rotating view point, two vortices appear at the both sides of centerline. These vortices seem to be the main reason of the tracer behavior shown in the asymmetric velocity experiment. This profile is quite similar to the profiles created by the baroclinic instability on the rotating annulus. The temperature profiles obtained from the numerical calculations and Fourier transforms of it are quite similar to the results of the experiment. bove esults intend that at least two types of intrinsic instabilities can occur in the melt of Czochralski growing systems. Because the instabilities cause temperature fluctuations in the melt and near the crystal-melt interface, some defects may be generated by them. When the crucible size becomes large, the intensity of the instabilities should increase. Therefore, to produce large single crystals with good quality, the behavior of the intrinsic instabilities in the melt as well as the effects of the instabilities on the defects in the ingot should be studied. As one of the cause of the defects in the large diameter Silicon single crystal grown by the

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A Model based Vocational Evaluation for People with Psychiatric Disabilities (정신장애인 직업재활모델과 직업평가 - 직업기능척도 개발을 위한 예비연구 -)

  • Lee, Seong-Gyu;Kim, Sang-Hee
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.54
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    • pp.123-147
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    • 2003
  • It is well known that one of essential features of psychiatric disability is vocational impairment. Since the year of 2000 when psychiatric disability was declared as one of disability categories in Korea, vocational rehabilitation programs have been actively administered. At this point, it is compelling that vocational evaluation serves as a means of screening out the most promising candidates, identifying their vocational deficits and strengths, designing the individualized vocational interventions, and evaluating vocational outcomes. Still, vocational evaluation for people with psychiatric disabilities has been more problematic than for any other group with disabilities. The authors argued that vocational evaluation for people with psychiatric disabilities should be based on a certain vocational rehabilitation model to address those problems. It is because there exists an indispensible relationship between the vocational rehabilitation model and vocational evaluation. In other words, the main purposes, measurement time points, and focus of vocational evaluation may depend on which of vocational rehabilitation models to make a choice of. In addition, the vocational rehab model(i.e., vocational readiness model or graduation model) underlying traditional vocational evaluation does not seem to work for people with psychiatric disabilities. Authors argued that accelerating model fits for psychiathric characteristics which are often unpredictable and turbulent. As a preliminary step of developing vocational functioning instrument incorporating the demand characteristics of the accelerating model, post-hoc analyses were done on data from a vocational functioning measure and the results were critically examined from viewpoints of accelerating model. For these purposes, discussions were made about a) general functioning of vocational evaluation, (b) relation between vocational rehabilitation model and vocational evaluation, (c) the reasons why the accelerating model is more appropriate to the characterstics of psychiatric clients than the graduation model, (d) post-hoc analytic results reviewed from viewpoints of accelerating model-based vocational evaluation This study is significant in that it attempted model-based, model-specific vocational evaluation as a preliminary step for developing vocational functioning assessment instruments ill future.

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A Study on Practices and Improvement Factors of Financial Disclosures in early stages of IFRS Adoption - An Integrative Approach of Korean Cases: Embracing Views of Reporting Entities and Users of Financial Statements (IFRS 공시 실태 개선방안에 대한 소고 - 보고기업, 정보이용자 요인을 고려한 통합적 접근 -)

  • Kim, Hee-Suk
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.113-127
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    • 2012
  • From the end of 1st quarter of 2012, Korean mandatory firms had started releasing financial reports conforming to the K-IFRS(Korean adopted International Financial Reporting Standards). Major characteristics of IFRS, such as 'principles based' features, consolidated reporting, 'fair value' measurement, increased pressure for non-financial disclosures have resulted in brief and various disclosure practices regarding the main body of each statements and vast amount of note description requirements. Meanwhile, a host of previous studies on IFRS disclosures have incorporated regulatory and/or 'compete information' perspectives, mainly focusing on suggesting further enforcement of strengthened requirements and providing guidelines for specific treatments. Thus, as an extension of prior findings and suggestions this study had explored to conduct an integrative approach embracing views of the reporting entities and the users of financial information. In spite of all the state-driven efforts for faithful representation and comparability of corporate financial reports, an overhaul of disclosure practices of fiscal year 2010 and 2011 had revealed numerous cases of insufficiency and discordance in terms of mandatory norms and market expectations. As to the causes of such shortcomings, this study identified several factors from the corporate side and the users of the information; some inherent aspects of IFRS, industry/corporate-specific context, expenditures related to internalizing IFRS system, reduced time frame for presentation. lack of clarity and details to meet the quality of information - understandability, comparability etc. - commonly requested by the user group. In order to improve current disclosure practices, dual approach had been suggested; Firstly, to encourage and facilitate implementation, (1) further segmentation and differentiation of mandates among companies, (2) redefining the scope and depth of note descriptions, (3) diversification and coordination of reporting periods, (4) providing support for equipping disclosure systems and granting incentives for best practices had been discussed. Secondly, as for the hard measures, (5) regularizing active involvement of corporate and user group delegations in the establishment and amendment process of K-IFRS (6) enforcing detailed and standardized disclosure on reporting entities had been recommended.

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Effects of Strength Recognition on the Intent of Start-up after Retirement: To the Office Workers (강점인식이 은퇴 후 창업의도에 미치는 영향: 직장인을 대상으로)

  • Park, Hye sung;Park, Woojin;Yun, Bae byung
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.143-150
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    • 2020
  • This research is intended to identify how office worker's recognition of strength affects the intention of starting a business when it is used as a medium for utilizing strength. The survey period was conducted for two months from January 17, 2019 to March 8, 2019. In order to achieve the object of this study, a significant number of employees have been collected nationwide, and 287 office workers were analyzed after collecting 300 questionaires, excluding 13 office workers who were not sincere. The significant data were analyzed by utilizing the structural equation and technical statistics and by verifying the conformity of structural model and measurement model and by investigating the relationship between variables. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, employee's perception of strength has been found to have a significant effect on the utilizing of strength. Second, the use of workers' strengths has been found to have a significant effect on the intention of starting a business. Third, it has been confirmed that in the relationship between the employee's perception of strength and intention to start a business, the recognition of strength has a significant effect on the intention of starting a business only through the use of strength. Most office workers are nervous about the future and make various plans. The time to live after retirement is getting longer and jobs and working hours are shrinking at an alarming rate. According to the analysis on the status of small business owners in the mid-term of 2017 data, the average monthly operating profit of small business owners across the country is decreasing over the years, and most start-ups are subsistence-type start-ups, and they decide to start their own businesses because they have no other choice than start-ups. As the number of small business owners suffering from financial difficulties has increased since the financial crisis and insecurity of job is pushing those with financial difficulties after retirement to the battleground of the start-up market, the result of this research suggest that the workers need to recognize their own strength and enhance the importance of utilizing the strength.

Development of Movement Analysis Program and its Feasibility Test in Streotactic Body Radiation Threrapy (복부부위의 체부정위방사선치료시 호흡에 의한 움직임분석 프로그램 개발 및 유용성 평가)

  • Shin, Eun-Hyuk;Han, Young-Yih;Kim, Jin-Sung;Park, Hee-Chul;Shin, Jung-Suk;Ju, Sang-Gyu;Lee, Ji-Hea;Ahn, Jong-Ho;Lee, Jai-Ki;Choi, Doo-Ho
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.107-116
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    • 2011
  • Respiratory gated radiation therapy and stereotactic body radiation therapy require identical tumor motions during each treatment with the motion detected in treatment planning CT. Therefore, this study developed a tumor motion monitoring and analysis system during the treatments employing RPM data, gated setup OBI images and a data analysis software. A respiratory training and guiding program which improves the regularity of breathing was used to patients. The breathing signal was obtained by RPM and the recorded data in the 4D console was read after treatment. The setup OBI images obtained gated at 0% and 50% of breathing phases were used to detect the tumor motion range in crenio-caudal direction. By matching the RPM data recorded at the OBI imaging time, a factor which converts the RPM motion to the tumor motion was computed. RPM data was entered to the institute developed data analysis software and the maximum, minimum, average of the breathing motion as well as the standard deviation of motion amplitude and period was computed. The computed result is exported in an excel file. The conversion factor was applied to the analyzed data to estimate the tumor motion. The accuracy of the developed method was tested by using a moving phantom, and the efficacy was evaluated for 10 stereotactic body radiation therapy patients. For the sine wave motion of the phantom with 4 sec of period and 2 cm of peak-to-peak amplitude, the measurement was slightly larger (4.052 sec) and the amplitude was smaller (1.952 cm). For patient treatment, one patient was evaluated not to qualified to SBRT due to the usability of the breathing, and in one patient case, the treatment was changed to respiratory gated treatment due the larger motion range of the tumor than treatment planed motion. The developed method and data analysis program was useful to estimate the tumor motion during treatment.

Quality Dimensions Affecting the Effectiveness of a Semantic-Web Search Engine (검색 효과성에 영향을 미치는 시맨틱웹 검색시스템 품질요인에 관한 연구)

  • Han, Dong-Il;Hong, Il-Yoo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.1-31
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    • 2009
  • This paper empirically examines factors that potentially influence the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. A research model has been proposed that shows the impact of quality-related factors upon the effectiveness of a semantic search engine, based on DeLone and McLean's(2003) information systems success model. An empirical study has been conducted to test hypotheses formulated around the research model, and statistical methods were applied to analyze gathered data and draw conclusions. Implications for academics and practitioners are offered based on the findings of the study. The proposed model includes three quality dimensions of a Web-based semantic search engine-namely, information quality, system quality and service quality. These three dimensions each have measures designed to collectively assess the respective dimension. The model is intended to examine the relationship between measures of these quality dimensions and measures of two dependent constructs, including individuals' net benefit and user satisfaction. Individuals' net benefit was measured by the extent to which the user's information needs were adequately met, whereas user satisfaction was measured by a combination of the perceived satisfaction with search results and the perceived satisfaction with the overall system. A total of 23 hypotheses have been formulated around the model, and a questionnaire survey has been conducted using a functional semantic search website created by KT and Hakia, so as to collect data to validate the model. Copies of a questionnaire form were handed out in person to 160 research associates and employees working in the area of designing and developing semantic search engines. Those who received the form, 148 respondents returned valid responses. The survey form asked respondents to use the given website to answer questions concerning the system. The results of the empirical study have indicated that, of the three quality dimensions, information quality was found to have the strongest association with the effectiveness of a Web-based semantic search engine. This finding is consistent with the observation in the literature that the aspects of the information quality should serve as a basis for evaluating the search outcomes from a semantic search engine. Measures under the information quality dimension that have a positive effect on informational gratification and user satisfaction were found to be recall and currency. Under the system quality dimension, response time and interactivity, were positively related to informational gratification. On the other hand, only one measure under the service quality dimension, reliability was found to have a positive relationship with user satisfaction. The results were based on the seven hypotheses that have been accepted. One may wonder why 15 out of the 23 hypotheses have been rejected and question the theoretical soundness of the model. However, the correlations between independent variables and dependent variables came out to be fairly high. This suggests that the structural equation model yielded results inconsistent with those of coefficient analysis, because the structural equation model intends to examine the relationship among independent variables as well as the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. The findings offer some useful implications for owners of a semantic search engine, as far as the design and maintenance of the website is concerned. First, the system should be designed to respond to the user's query as fast as possible. Also it should be designed to support the search process by recommending, revising, and choosing a search query, so as to maximize users' interactions with the system. Second, the system should present search results with maximum recall and currency to effectively meet the users' expectations. Third, it should be capable of providing online services in a reliable and trustworthy manner. Finally, effective increase in user satisfaction requires the improvement of quality factors associated with a semantic search engine, which would in turn help increase the informational gratification for users. The proposed model can serve as a useful framework for measuring the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. Applying the search engine success framework to the measurement of search engine effectiveness has the potential to provide an outline of what areas of a semantic search engine needs improvement, in order to better meet information needs of users. Further research will be needed to make this idea a reality.