• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.41-48
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• 1995

In former times the protection of our environment didn't play an important role due to the fact that emissions and effluents were not considered as serious impacts. However, opinions and scientific measurements meanwhile confirmed that the impacts are more serious than expected. Thus measures to protect our earth has to be taken into consideration. A part of these measures in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). One of the most important parts of the EIA is the collection of basic datas and the following evaluation. Experience out of the daily business of Gerling Consulting Group shows that the content of the EIA has to be revised and enlarged in certain fields. The historical development demonstrated that in areas in which the population and the industrial activities reached high concentration there is a high necessity to develop strict environmental laws and regulations. Maximum values of the concentration of hazardous materials were fixed concerning the emission into and water. Companies not following these regulations were punished. The total amount of environmental offences increased rapidly during the last decade, at least in Germany. During this development the public consciousness concerning environmental affairs increased as well in the industrialized countries. But it could clearly be seen that the development in the field of environmental protection went into the wrong direction. The technologies to protect the environment became more and more sophisticated and terms as: "state of the art" guided more and more to lower emissions, Filtertechnologies and wastewater treatment for example reached a high technical level-but all these sophisticated technologies has one and the same characteristic: they were end-of-the pipe solutions. A second effect was that this kind of environmental protection costs a lot of money. High investments are necessary to reduce the dust emission by another ppm! Could this be the correct way? In Germany the discussion started that the environmental laws reduce the attractivity to invest or to enlarge existing investments within the country. Other countries seem to be not so strict with controlling the environmental laws which means it's simply cheaper to produce in Portugal or Greece. Everybody however knows that this is not the correct way and does not solve the environmental problems. Meanwhile the general picture changes a little bit and we think it changes into the correct direction "End-of-the-pipe" solutions are still necessary but this word received a real negative touch and nobody wants to be brought into connection with this word received a real negative touch and nobody wants to be brought into connection with this word especially in connection with environmental management and safety. Modern actual environmental management starts in a different way. Thoughts about emissions start in the very beginning of the production, they start with the design of the product and modification of traditional modes of production. Basis of these ideas are detailed analyses of products and processes. Due to the above mentioned facts that the public environmental consciousness changed dramatically a continous environmental improvement of each single production plant has to be guarantied. This question is already an important question of the EIA. But it was never really checked in a wholistic approach. Environmental risks have to be taken into considerations during the execution of an EIA. This means that the environmental risks have to be reduced down to a capable risk-level. Environmental risks have to be considered within the phase of planning, during the operation of a plant and after shut down. The experience shows that most of the environmental relevant accidents were and caused by human fault. Even in highly protected plants the human risk-factor can not be excluded during evaluation of the risk-potential. Thus the approach of an EIA has to regard technical evaluations as well as organizational thoughts and the human factor. An environmental risk is a threat to the environment. An analysis of the risk concerning the organizational and human aspect however never was properly executed during an EIA. A possible solution could be to use an instrument as the actual EMAS (Environmental Management System) of the EC for more accurate evaluation of the impact to the environment during an EIA. Organizations or investors could demonstrate by an approved EMAS or even by showing their installment of EMAS that not only the technical level of the planned investment meets the requested standards but as well the actual or planned management is able to reduce the environmental impact down to a bearable level.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.1155-1162
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• 2013

Estrogen like activities were evaluated using ethanol and hot water extracts of gongjindan (GJD) and 3 types of brown algae by an in vitro detection system. Laminaria japonica and Undaria pinnatifida represented statistically significant (p<0.001) estrogen like activities, while GJD and Ecklonia stolonifera did not. Furthermore, activities of hot water extracts ($500{\mu}g/ml$) of Laminaria japonica and three mixture (Ecklonia stolonifera : Undaria pinnatifida : Laminaria japonica, 1: 1: 1) were stronger than that of $10^{-7}M$ $17{\beta}$-estradiol. These results suggest that Laminaria japonica contain estrogen like compounds. Based on these results, the prepared seaweed GJD were used for animal experiments about the effects on inhibition of platelet aggregation and serum lipid levels in ovariectomized rats. 9-week Old female SD-rats were randomly assigned to 3 groups as sham-operated rats, ovariectomized rats and ovariectomized rats that were treated with GJD. The rats were placed on prescribed diets for 5 weeks following ovariectomy. Total cholesterol and triglyceride contents on serum decreased in the SHAM group compared to the OVX-CON group. 5 weeks feeding of GJD resulted in significant lowering of triglyceride and a decreasing tendency of total cholesterol level. The level of HDL-cholesterol on serum increased significantly by feeding diets containing the GJD. The ability of platelet aggregation of group treated with GJD was less than that of the OVX-CON group. These results suggest that the beneficial effects of seaweed gongjindan may be used to improve menopausal syndrome.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.635-641
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• 2010

Background: Radiofrequency endovenous ablation of incompetent saphenous vein has gaining popularity over the conventional ligation and stripping as a minimally invasive technique. The latest version of radiofrequency endovenous catheter, $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast VNUS medical Technologies, San Jose, CA, adopted a segmental ablation system, instead of continous pullback, is designed to reduce treatment time in comparison with the previous model $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ plus VNUS medical Technologies, San Jose, CA. The purpose of this study is to compare the difference between two endovenous radiofrequency ablation systems in terms of treatment efficacy and complication rates. We analyze the initial efficacy and complication rates of $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast with $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ plus. Material and Method: Between June 2006 and August 2009, $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ plus was performed to treat varicose vein on 59 limbs in 41. patients and $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast was performed on 76 limbs in 67 patients. We retrospectively compared in both group with sex, mean treatment time, mean treatment diameter, conjugated treatment, and complications after the procedure. Result: All patient were symptomatic and diagnosed as varicose vein and underwent level 2 clinical classification with color duplex scan. The mean treatment time for the great saphenous vein was significantly less with $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast ($17.0{\pm}6.5min$) than $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ plus ($62.7{\pm}9.8min$). There was no significant difference in 1 yr closure rate between groups (p=0.32). Minor complications such as skin burn, thrombophlebitis, ecchymosis, hematoma, cellulitis, tenderness, and there were not different between the groups. Conclusion: Both $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast and $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ plus are effective methods of endovenous saphenous ablation. $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast is superior to the previous model with less treatment time preserving compatible efficacy and complications. The efficacy of $VNUS^{\circledR}Colosure$ fast for long term closure rate remains to be established.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.4 s.62
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• pp.95-104
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of product design and analyze the impacts of product design on quality competitiveness, product reliability, and consumer satisfaction in an attempt to provide a foundation for the theory of design management. For this empirical analysis, this study has derived the relevant measurement variables from a survey on 400 Korean manufacturing firms during the period of $August{\sim}October$ 2003. The empirical findings are summarized as follows: First, the determinants of product design are very significantly (at p<0.001) estimated to be the R&D capability, the level of R&D expenditure, the level of innovative activities(5S, TQM, 6Sigma, QC, etc.). This empirical result can support Pawar and Driva(1999)'s two principles by which the performance of product design and product development can be simultaneously evaluated in the context of CE(concurrent engineering) of NPD(newly product development) activities. Second, the hypothesis on the causality: product design${\rightarrow}$quality competitiveness${\rightarrow}$customer satisfaction${\rightarrow}$customer loyalty is very significantly (at p<0.001) accepted. This implies that product design positively affects consumer satisfaction, not directly but indirectly, by influencing quality competitiveness. This empirical result of this study can also support the studies of for example Flynn et al.(1994), Ahire et at.(1996), Afire and Dreyfus(2000) which conclude that design management is a significant determinant of product quality. The aforementioned empirical results are important in the following sense: the empirical result that quality competitiveness plays a bridging role between product design and consumer satisfaction can reconcile the traditional debate between QFD(quality function development) approach asserted by product developers and conjoint analysis maintained by marketers. The first empirical result is related to QFD approach whereas the second empirical result is related to conjoint analysis. At the same time, the empirical results of this study can support the rationale of design integration(DI) of Ettlie(1997), i.e., the coordination of the timing and substance of product development activities performed by the various disciplines and organizational functions of a product's life cycle. Finally, the policy implication (at the corporate level) from the empirical results is that successful design management(DM) requires not only the support of top management but also the removal of communication barriers, (i.e. the adoption of cross-functional teams) so that concurrent engineering(CE), the simultaneous development of product and process designs can assure product development speed, design quality, and market success.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.31-41
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• 2004

Background : The cun measurement system, an essential and convenient method in locating acupoints, has been widely used in the practice of acupuncture. However, traditional cun measurement has been criticized for its lack of reliability. Objectives : The purposes of this study are to determine if one cun measured by the directional methods have a consistency with that of proportional methods and to investigate which factors are related with these differences, especially in forearm. Methods : The distance between the elbow crease and the wrist crease of forearm was compared to a reference value of one cun obtained by the directional method. In this method, one cun is one third of the distance between index finger and small finger of a subject, measured at proximal interphalangeal joint. In addition, to investigate the factors influencing the differences between these two methods, we measured the height and body weight and calculated body mass index (BMI). Finally we analyzed the factors correlated with these lengths by linear regression test. Results : The results showed that one cun obtained by the directional methods were significantly different from one cun by the proportional methods in forearm. It was demonstrated that the length acquired with the directional method was more correlated with body weight and body mass index, while the length obtained by the proportional method was more correlated with the height. Conclusion : These findings suggest that the directional method is less likely dependable in locating acupoints than the proportional method because the influencing factors are different.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.191-210
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• 2014

As mobile devices that can be connected to the Internet have spread and networking has become possible whenever/wherever, the Internet has become central in the dissemination and consumption of news. Accordingly, the ways news is gathered, disseminated, and consumed have changed greatly. In the traditional news media such as magazines and newspapers, expert editors determined what events were worthy of deploying their staffs or freelancers to cover and what stories from newswires or other sources would be printed. Furthermore, they determined how these stories would be displayed in their publications in terms of page placement, space allocation, type sizes, photographs, and other graphic elements. In turn, readers-news consumers-judged the importance of news not only by its subject and content, but also through subsidiary information such as its location and how it was displayed. Their judgments reflected their acceptance of an assumption that these expert editors had the knowledge and ability not only to serve as gatekeepers in determining what news was valuable and important but also how to rank its value and importance. As such, news assembled, dispensed, and consumed in this manner can be said to be expert-based recommended news. However, in the era of Internet news, the role of expert editors as gatekeepers has been greatly diminished. Many Internet news sites offer a huge volume of news on diverse topics from many media companies, thereby eliminating in many cases the gatekeeper role of expert editors. One result has been to turn news users from passive receptacles into activists who search for news that reflects their interests or tastes. To solve the problem of an overload of information and enhance the efficiency of news users' searches, Internet news sites have introduced numerous recommendation techniques. Recommendations based on popularity constitute one of the most frequently used of these techniques. This popularity-based approach shows a list of those news items that have been read and shared by many people, based on users' behavior such as clicks, evaluations, and sharing. "most-viewed list," "most-replied list," and "real-time issue" found on news sites belong to this system. Given that collective intelligence serves as the premise of these popularity-based recommendations, popularity-based news recommendations would be considered highly important because stories that have been read and shared by many people are presumably more likely to be better than those preferred by only a few people. However, these recommendations may reflect a popularity bias because stories judged likely to be more popular have been placed where they will be most noticeable. As a result, such stories are more likely to be continuously exposed and included in popularity-based recommended news lists. Popular news stories cannot be said to be necessarily those that are most important to readers. Given that many people use popularity-based recommended news and that the popularity-based recommendation approach greatly affects patterns of news use, a review of whether popularity-based news recommendations actually reflect important news can be said to be an indispensable procedure. Therefore, in this study, popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news portal was compared with top placements of news in printed newspapers, and news users' judgments of which stories were personally and socially important were analyzed. The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, content analyses were used to compare the content of the popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news site with those of the expert-based news recommendations of printed newspapers. Five days of news stories were collected. "most-viewed list" of the Naver portal site were used as the popularity-based recommendations; the expert-based recommendations were represented by the top pieces of news from five major daily newspapers-the Chosun Ilbo, the JoongAng Ilbo, the Dong-A Daily News, the Hankyoreh Shinmun, and the Kyunghyang Shinmun. In the second stage, along with the news stories collected in the first stage, some Internet news stories and some news stories from printed newspapers that the Internet and the newspapers did not have in common were randomly extracted and used in online questionnaire surveys that asked the importance of these selected news stories. According to our analysis, only 10.81% of the popularity-based news recommendations were similar in content with the expert-based news judgments. Therefore, the content of popularity-based news recommendations appears to be quite different from the content of expert-based recommendations. The differences in importance between these two groups of news stories were analyzed, and the results indicated that whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their recommendations of stories of personal importance, the expert-based recommendations ranked higher in social importance. This study has importance for theory in its examination of popularity-based news recommendations from the two theoretical viewpoints of collective intelligence and popularity bias and by its use of both qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative methods (questionnaires). It also sheds light on the differences in the role of media channels that fulfill an agenda-setting function and Internet news sites that treat news from the viewpoint of markets.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.273-279
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• 2010

Purpose: The purpose of this in vitro study was to compare the marginal adaptation of a ceramic-pressed-to-metal restoration with traditional metal-ceramic restoration. Materials and methods: Duplicating the prepared resin tooth, 20 metal dies were fabricated. Twenty metal copings of 2 groups which were metal ceramic restoration and pressed to metal restoration were fabricated. The marginal opening of each coping was measured with Microscope (BX 60M-36E $41D^{(R)}$: Olympus, Japan). After porcelain build-up, the marginal opening of metal ceramic restoration and pressed to metal restoration ($PoM^{(R)}$: Ivoclar vivadent., Liechtenstein) were also evaluated in the same method. The measurements were analyzed using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and Mann-Whitney U test. Results: Within the limits of this study, the results were as follows. 1. Metal-ceramic restorations in coping state ($64.93{\pm}12.48\;{\mu}m$) in compared with Metal ceramic restorations after porcelain build-up ($63.43{\pm}12.86\;{\mu}m$) had no significant difference in marginal adaptation. 2. Pressed-metal-ceramic restorations in coping state ($50.00{\pm}12.28\;{\mu}m$) in compared with Pressed metal ceramic restorations after porcelain build-up ($56.72{\pm}13.80\;{\mu}m$) had no significant difference in marginal adaptation. 3. Metal-ceramic restorations in compared Pressed-metal-ceramic restorations had no significant difference in marginal adaptation. Conclusion: Pressed-metal-ceramic restorations have the advantage of being technically less change through using of the lost-wax technique and this allows for the convenience of a full-contour ceramic wax-up as opposed to the more technique-sensitive layering method. Pressed-metal-ceramic restorations may be considered in clinic on the basis of the result of this study and the advantage of this system.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.153-169
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• 2011

Today using Internet environment is considered absolutely essential for establishing corporate marketing strategy. Companies have promoted their products and services through various ways of on-line marketing activities such as providing gifts and points to customers in exchange for participating in events, which is based on customers' membership data. Since companies can use these membership data to enhance their marketing efforts through various data analysis, appropriate website membership management may play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of on-line marketing campaign. Despite the growing interests in proper membership management, however, there have been difficulties in identifying inappropriate members who can weaken on-line marketing effectiveness. In on-line environment, customers tend to not reveal themselves clearly compared to off-line market. Customers who have malicious intent are able to create duplicate IDs by using others' names illegally or faking login information during joining membership. Since the duplicate members are likely to intercept gifts and points that should be sent to appropriate customers who deserve them, this can result in ineffective marketing efforts. Considering that the number of website members and its related marketing costs are significantly increasing, it is necessary for companies to find efficient ways to screen and exclude unfavorable troublemakers who are duplicate members. With this motivation, this study proposes an approach for managing duplicate membership based on the social network analysis and verifies its effectiveness using membership data gathered from real websites. A social network is a social structure made up of actors called nodes, which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency. Social networks represent the relationship between the nodes and show the direction and strength of the relationship. Various analytical techniques have been proposed based on the social relationships, such as centrality analysis, structural holes analysis, structural equivalents analysis, and so on. Component analysis, one of the social network analysis techniques, deals with the sub-networks that form meaningful information in the group connection. We propose a method for managing duplicate memberships using component analysis. The procedure is as follows. First step is to identify membership attributes that will be used for analyzing relationship patterns among memberships. Membership attributes include ID, telephone number, address, posting time, IP address, and so on. Second step is to compose social matrices based on the identified membership attributes and aggregate the values of each social matrix into a combined social matrix. The combined social matrix represents how strong pairs of nodes are connected together. When a pair of nodes is strongly connected, we expect that those nodes are likely to be duplicate memberships. The combined social matrix is transformed into a binary matrix with '0' or '1' of cell values using a relationship criterion that determines whether the membership is duplicate or not. Third step is to conduct a component analysis for the combined social matrix in order to identify component nodes and isolated nodes. Fourth, identify the number of real memberships and calculate the reliability of website membership based on the component analysis results. The proposed procedure was applied to three real websites operated by a pharmaceutical company. The empirical results showed that the proposed method was superior to the traditional database approach using simple address comparison. In conclusion, this study is expected to shed some light on how social network analysis can enhance a reliable on-line marketing performance by efficiently and effectively identifying duplicate memberships of websites.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.18
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• pp.111-131
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• 1992

This thesis was designed to study Symbolics of Chinese Liturgical Vestments. Chinese who regarded the life of human beings as the combination of heaven and earth considered garments as the traditional product of the movement of nature. Accordingly, they thought human beings are the center of the universe composed by heaven and earth and the chief of all things; therefore man only can utilize clothes to distinguish from all of the colours. This views of clothes led to the development of liturgical vestments esteemed courtesy than anything else, especially the thought of courtesy associated with Conficius who regarded courtesy as the highest things and since then the theory of Five Elements and courtesy were inherited by all the adherents of Conficius. Yin and Yang Five Elements in the liturgical vestments was given absolute symbolics in both formative side and in colourful side. results of research studied in this was can be summed up as follows : 1. The crown of rites was made imitating after the system of head, horn, beard, bread of birds and beasts and that form of crown is front-circ-ular and back-rectangular meant to be towards light and dark. That the upper part of faceplace is black represented the way of heaven and lower part of red symbolized the way of earth. 2. Upper vestment of liturgical rites symbolizes heaven and outskirt represented earth. So front of outskirt is YANG and back is Yin. It is why then are going to harmonize positive and negative making front part three width and back part four width. Therefore, emperor who symbolizes heaven made the subjects recognize high and low and wore Dae-gu(大 ), Kon-bok(袞服), Bel-bok, Chui-bok, and Hyonbok according to the object and position of rites so that he may rule the country based on courtesy. 3. As an accessory of liturgical vestments, Bul, Pae-ok, Su, Dae-dai, Hyok-Dai, Kyu, and Hol were used. Before Bul was used man dressed skirt as the first waist-dress in order to conceal intimate part of the body. Pae-ok, as decoration blended with jade was worn by men of virtue, so men of virtue symbolized morality and virtue by Pae-ok. Su began from Yeok, connected with Pae-su , in Chou-dynasty is said to be originated by practical needs and they are divided into large Su and small su, and maintained as decoration to signify the class positions. Dae-dai did the work as not to loose the liturgical vestments and leather belt hang Bul and Su to begin as the function of practical use are in later years it became decoration to symboliz e the class position. Kyu was a jade used when empeor nominated feudal lords and observe ceremony to God and Hol, was held in hands to record everything not to forget. These Kyu and Hol became to offer courtesy during the time of rites and in later years it became used according to class position rather than practical use. 4. As far as colours are concerned, colours based by five colours according to YIN-YANG Five Elements theory and they were divided into a primary colour and a secondary colours. Primary colours corresponded with the theory of Five Elements each other, Blue, Red, Tellow, White, and Black symbolized ive Elements, five hour space, five directions, and five emperors. Secondary colours contradict with Blue, Red, Yellow, White and Black and another as a primary colour and they are Green, Scaret, Indigo, Violet, Hun colour, Chu colour, and Chi colour. This primary colour was used in liturgical vestments, that is, upper-vestments used black colour. This primary colour was used in liturgical vestments, that is, upper-vestments used black colour as primary colour and outskirt was used Hun colour as secondary colours. Thus symbolism in chinese liturgical vestments mainly began with heaven and earth and corresponded with YIN-YANG Five Elements Scool. They were developed as the scholary theory and Conficius and his followers in the later days and continued up to Min-dynasty.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.25-41
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• 2011

Recently, support vector machines (SVMs) are being recognized as competitive tools as compared with other data mining techniques for solving pattern recognition or classification decision problems. Furthermore, many researches, in particular, have proved them more powerful than traditional artificial neural networks (ANNs) (Amendolia et al., 2003; Huang et al., 2004, Huang et al., 2005; Tay and Cao, 2001; Min and Lee, 2005; Shin et al., 2005; Kim, 2003).The classification decision, such as a binary or multi-class decision problem, used by any classifier, i.e. data mining techniques is so cost-sensitive particularly in financial classification problems such as the credit ratings that if the credit ratings are misclassified, a terrible economic loss for investors or financial decision makers may happen. Therefore, it is necessary to convert the outputs of the classifier into wellcalibrated posterior probabilities-based multiclass credit ratings according to the bankruptcy probabilities. However, SVMs basically do not provide such probabilities. So it required to use any method to create the probabilities (Platt, 1999; Drish, 2001). This paper applied AdaBoost algorithm-based support vector machines (SVMs) into a bankruptcy prediction as a binary classification problem for the IT companies in Korea and then performed the multi-class credit ratings of the companies by making a normal distribution shape of posterior bankruptcy probabilities from the loss functions extracted from the SVMs. Our proposed approach also showed that their methods can minimize the misclassification problems by adjusting the credit grade interval ranges on condition that each credit grade for credit loan borrowers has its own credit risk, i.e. bankruptcy probability.