• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.338-344
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• 2015

Background: Ginseng (the roots of Panax ginseng Meyer) is a well-known traditional Oriental medicine and is now widely used as a health food. It contains several types of ginsenosides, which are considered the major active medicinal components of ginseng. It has recently been reported that the qualitative and quantitative properties of ginsenosides found in ginseng may differ, depending on cultivation regions, ages, species, and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to study these variations with respect to cultivation ages and regions. Methods: In this study, 3-6-yr-old roots of P. ginseng were collected from three different cultivation regions. The contents of five ginsenosides (Rb1, Rd, Rc, Re, and Rgl) were measured by rapid resolution liquid chromatography coupled with quadruple-time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The Kruskal-Wallis Rank sum test and multiple t test were used for comparative analysis of the data to evaluate the dynamic changes in the accumulation of these ginsenosides affected by cultivation regions and ages. Results: The content and composition of ginsenosides varied significantly among specimens collected from different cultivation regions and having different cultivation ages. For all samples, the content of Rg1 and Re ginsenosides increases with age and this rate of increase is different for each sample. The contents of Rb1, Rc, and Rd varied with cultivation ages in samples from different cultivation regions; especially, Rb1 from a 6-yr-old root showed approximately twofold variation among the samples from three cultivation regions. Furthermore, the content of Rb1 highly correlated with that of Rd (r = 0.89 across all locations and ages). Conclusion: In our study, only the contents of ginsenosides Rg1 and Re were affected by the root age. Ginsenosides Rb1, Rc, and Rd varied widely with ages in samples from different cultivation regions.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.323-335
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• 2017

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to analyze the current status of nutrition education programs for multicultural families and to provide policy suggestions for improvement. Methods: In-depth interviews of a total of 21 multicultural experts were conducted; 15 people were interviewed individually, while 6 people were interviewed in groups of three. Results: In-depth interviews revealed various problems related to the operation of nutrition education programs. The causes of problems were analyzed and categorized as four factors: systemic, practical, environmental and cultural. As for the systematic factors, insufficient linkage between related organizations and duplicate performance of several projects were identified as concerns Establishment of a control tower and strengthening the linkage among the related organizations may be needed to address this concern. With regard to practical factors, the study identified that language barriers, and lack of nutritional education media and tools translated into multicultural languages were limiting factors. These limitations the development of nutrition education materials that aretranslated into multiple languages, implementation of education programs that are different from the Korean education, and by providing interpreters. As for the environmental factors, low educational level and poor nutritional knowledge of multicultural women made it difficult for them to understand the contents of the education. Demonstration, practical training and urgent education on pregnancy and childbirth nutrition were identified as needs to address these concerns. Withregard to cultural factors, food culture conflict with Korean families, and difficulties in home practices were detected as concerns. Participants in the study suggested that getting education with family and facilitation of weekend and nighttime programs health of this community. Conclusions: Further studies are needed to adopt more effective and efficient nutrition intervention to promote the healthy eating of the married immigrant women based on the study results.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.94-105
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to understand what kind of effects a local residents’ participation on a local environmental problem has on the Environmental consciousness of the resident, and on the local community. I (researcher) employed qualitative research methods on the residents' environmental movement, which claimed to preserve the Sung Mi Mountain from the Seoul City Hall's plan of the water reservoir construction. I tried to understand the participation motivation and participating actions, and also the changes and effects the participation brought at both a personal, and community level. The data were gathered by means of in-depth interview with the local residents and unstructured questionnaire. At first, through the residents' environmental movement, the participants acquired a growth in environmental consciousness. For example, they obtained better understanding of the environment, change of attitude to environment, and participation function. Secondly, it is meaningful that a local tie intervened by the environment, enforced self-governing, and shows how community sentiment plays an important role for local community organization. Moreover, the environmental movement contributed to developing a ‘culture for participation’. In conclusion, participating in a local environmental problem can be an integration of learning and practice and also leads to reflective thinking about the relationship not only between human beings and nature, but also among human beings. In addition, it can buildup a systemic cooperation for local problem-solving and the ability to make an alternative culture in the community. These are the significances of the local environmental problem-participation on the environmental education.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.85-95
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• 2017

Background: American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L.) and Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng Meyer) products, such as slices, have a similar appearance, but they have significantly different prices, leading to widespread adulteration in the commercial market. Their aroma characteristics are attracting increasing attention and are supposed to be effective and nondestructive markers to determine adulteration. Methods: The aroma characteristics of American and Asian ginseng were investigated using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS) and an electronic nose (E-nose). Their volatile organic compounds were separated, classified, compared, and analyzed with different pattern recognition. Results: The E-nose showed a good performance in grouping with a principle component analysis explaining 94.45% of variance. A total of 69 aroma components were identified by GC-MS, with 35.6% common components and 64.6% special ingredients between the two ginsengs. It was observed that the components and the number of terpenes and alcohols were markedly different, indicating possible reasons for their difference. The results of pattern recognition confirmed that the E-nose processing result is similar to that of GC-MS. The interrelation between aroma constituents and sensors indicated that special sensors were highly related to some terpenes and alcohols. Accordingly, the contents of selected constituents were accurately predicted by corresponding sensors with most $R^2$ reaching 90%. Conclusion: Combined with advanced chemometrics, the E-nose is capable of discriminating between American and Asian ginseng in both qualitative and quantitative angles, presenting an accurate, rapid, and nondestructive reference approach.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Industrial Systems Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.239-250
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• 2003

In this research, we propose a hybrid group decision support mechanism (H-GDSM) based on Fuzzy AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and FCM (Fuzzy Cognitive Map). The AHP elicits a corresponding priority vector interpreting the preferred information among the decision makers. Corresponding vector was composed of the pairwise comparison values of a set of objects. Since pairwise comparison values are the judgments obtained from an appropriate semantic scale. However, AHP couldn't represent the causal relationship among information, which were used by decision makers. In contrast to AHP, FCM could represent the causal relationship among variables or information. Therefore, FCMs were successfully developed and used in several ill-structured domains, such as strategic decision-making, policy making, and simulations. Nonetheless, many researchers used subjective and voluntary inputs to simulate the FCM. As a result of subjective inputs, it couldn't avoid the rebukes of businessman. To overcome these limitations, we incorporated the Fuzzy membership functions, AHP and FCM into a H-GDSM. In contrast to current AHP methods and FCMs, the H-GDSM method developed herein could concurrently tackle the pairwise comparison involving causal relationships under a group decision-making environment. The strengths and contributions of our mechanism were 1) handling of qualitative knowledge and causal relationships, 2) extraction of objective input value to simulate the FCM, 3) multi-phase group decision support based on H-GDSM. To validate our proposed mechanism we developed a simple prototype system to support negotiation-based decisions in electronic commerce (EC).

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.92-100
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• 2008

Productivity is acknowledged as a very important factor for successful construction projects. Various data items collected daily form a construction site can be used for monitoring its productivity by analyzing them. However, no analytical methods for that purpose have been established in the domestic construction industry yet. Previous researches that utilized OLAP and data mining to analyze the factors that affect the productivity did not do well with predicting future cases with sufficient reliability. This research therefore proposes a new analytical process which is capable of figuring out the factors that would affect the productivity of future projects, through qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data collected from past projects.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.226-233
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• 2018

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the current status and to suggest future directions for health management of teenagers who use healthy school tuck shops to improve teenagers' eating habits while reducing and preventing obesity. Methods: A total of 29 students (16 middle school students and 13 high school students) took part in the interview for this study, and the interview was conducted for each school's focus group by using qualitative research methodology. Results: The current status of using healthy school tuck shops and suggested future directions were divided into two categories. Personal barriers such as discrepancies between personal perceptions and behaviors and lack of food choice suitable to individual tastes can be solved by rebuilding the operating system to provide intuitive promotion of behavior and customized products through improvements in existing products and new product development. A lack of consistent management from low utilization convenience and difficulty in maintaining a constant purchase price can be handled by establishing a solution to restricted physical access for products, as well as seeking profit by improving distribution costs via continuous cooperation between the school and community. Conclusions: Continuous funding and a system that reflects the needs and preferences of healthy school tuck shop users should be applied for sustainable operation of healthy school tuck shops to improve teenagers' eating habits.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.11-22
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• 2020

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare and analyze the work environment, role conflict, and job embeddedness between comprehensive nursing care service (CNCS) ward nurses and general ward nurses. Methods: This descriptive research study involved 70 CNCS ward nurses and 69 general ward nurses working at an advanced general hospital in Seoul. Data were collected using the structured questionnaire from March 27 to April 14, 2019 and analyzed with the SPSS 24.0 program. Results: The work environment of the CNCS ward nurse was higher than that of the general ward nurse (t=4.38, p<.001), and the role conflict of the CNCS ward nurse was lower than that of the general ward nurse (t=-2.09, p=.038). However, job embeddedness did not show any statistically significant difference (t=0.22, p=.824). Conclusion: The results of this study show that the introduction of CNCS ward has shown improvement in the work environment and strengthened the establishment of the roles in their team, while maintaining the job embeddedness of nurses. These results indicate that improvements in the work environment, such as nurse staffing and material support, would contribute to the qualitative enhancement of nursing and that it would need to extend the introduction of CNCS wards.

• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.188-199
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• 2015

Purpose: This study aims to understand schools' response to infectious disease, perceived problems and suggestions, with regard to the 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea, in order to improve the infectious disease response system. Methods: Data were collected by focus group interviews with three groups composed of school health teachers, other teachers, and parents in Seoul-located schools. Results: The major theme was "Schools' Discretionary Response in the Absence of the Control Tower." Four major categories and 11 sub-categories were drawn from the findings. Four major categories were as follows: (a) Temperature monitoring caused lots of complaints, (b) Closure decisions were left at the discretion of schools, (c) Precautions are now being more emphasized, and (d) The support system were malfunctioning. Conclusion: The main areas to be improved are as follows: (1) School district offices should have an expanded role in infectious disease response and build cooperative partnerships with health authorities. (2) Preparedness for infectious disease should be strengthened. (3) Temperature monitoring systems should be improved, (4) Closure decisions should be made at a local community level. These are expected to help schools establish advanced infectious disease response systems.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.593-603
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• 2019

Purpose: Previous studies have highlighted that the nutritional behaviors among South Korean workers are far from ideal. This study examined the organizational influences affecting the eating practices of office workers in South Korea. Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 office workers at 12 companies in South Korea. The interviewer inquired about the employees' daily routines on food and beverage intake. The various factors that influence their food choices in their work environments were also explored. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using a content analysis. Results: A framework analysis revealed 7 key recurring themes, and these were grouped under three levels: team-, company-, and corporate group-levels. First, team dinners are core social events for all the workers and they tend to include high-caloric food and alcoholic beverages. The frequency of team meals and the food associated with them depend on various team characteristics such as gender composition, the nature of a team's work and the team leaders' emphasis on group meals. Second, the company's policies and practices regarding budget allocation for team meals and subsidies for cafeteria meals affect the workers' food intake practices. In addition, the physical environment of the worksite cafeterias can influence the choices of foods. Third, various corporate group policies that were not designed to target food intake had additional positive effects on the workers' eating behaviors. Conclusion: This study provides important insights into the broader organizational influences on the food consumption of employees in their workplace. These insights can be used to design and implement more effective intervention strategies for improving the nutritional behaviors of office workers.