• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.55-68
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• 2010

The seasonal variation of microbial community, based on the bacteria, heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNF), phytoplankton and ciliates, was investigated at three sites in the eutrophic brackish water of Lake Shihwa and its adjacent areas from May 2007 through May 2008. At the upstream-region site St. 1, compared to the other two sites, significantly lower salinities and higher concentrations of nutrients and chlorophyll $\alpha$ (Chl. $\alpha$) were recorded. The annual average abundances of bacteria at St. 1, St. 2 and St. 3 were $6.8{\times}10^6$, $7.4{\times}10^6$ and $4.6{\times}10^6\;cells\;mL^{-1}$, respectively. As for the annual average concentrations of HNF, $19{\times}10^2$, $6.7{\times}10^2$ and $5.9{\times}10^2\;cells\;mL^{-1}$, were recorded in St. 1, St. 2 and St. 3 respectively. The highest ciliate abundance appeared at St. 1 on 29 April, 2008 and in which, 99% were autotrophic ciliate Mesodinium rubrum (Myrionecta rubra). Significant linear correlations between the biomass of bacteria and Chl. $\alpha$ were found, however, no significant relationships between ciliates abudance/biomass and their prey organisms were detected in all three sites, implying relatively low energy transfer efficiencies between them. These results indicated that the trophic relationship between ciliates and their prey organisms in the microbial community might be influenced by indirect route since higher trophic level organisms did not directly correlate to those of lower trophic level, although high primary productions were detected in the eutrophic brackish water of Lake Shihwa and its adjacent areas.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.179-191
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• 1990

In order to study the effects of supplementation of live yeast(Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on the performance of laying hens, five experiments were conducted. Two experiment were conducted during summer period, one with 37 wk old Dekalb-Delta strain laying birds(Exp. 1) and the other one with 100 wk old molted Nick Chick Brown laying birds(Esp.2) . In each experiment, 240 birds were divided into 12 groups of 20 birds each and randomly distributed. Each of the two experimental diets(Control 71 and 0.05% live yeast supplemented 72) was fed to 6 groups for 4 wks in Exp.1 and 3 wks in Exp.2. Three experiments were conducted during winter period, Exp.2 with 54 wk old Hy-Line strain laying birds, Exp.4 with 52 wk old Hy-Line strain laying birds, and Exp.5 with 36 wk old broiler breeder(Indian River strain). In each experiment, 540 birds were divided into 18 groups of 30 birds each and randomly distributed. Each of the 3 experimental diets(Control：$T_1$0.05% live yeast supplemented：$T_2$ and 0.1% live yeast supplemented ： T$_3$) was fed to 9 groups for 6 wks in Exp.3, 9 wks in Exp.4 and 4 wks in Exp.5. In Exp.4, Latin Square design was employed to determine the effects of switching feeds at 3 wk intervals. All hens were housed in cages of commercial farm and experimental diets were made with commercial layer feeds. In Experiment 1, egg production was significantly(P＜0.05) higher in $T_2$. Feed intake was significantly (P＜higher in 72 at 1st wk but 4 wk average was not significantly different. Feed efficiency was significantly(P＜0.01) better in 72 at End wk but 4 wk average was not significantly different. Other parameters, such as weight, soft egg production, cracked egg production and mortality were not significantly different. In Experiment 2, egg production was significantly(P＜0.05) higher in $T_2$. Feed efficiency was significantly (P＜0.05 and P＜0.01) better at End wk and 3rd wk but 3 wk average was not significantly different. Soft egg production was significantly(P＜0.05) higher in 72. Other parameters were not significantly different. In Experiment 3, egg productions were significantly(P＜0.05) different among treatments ： $T_3$ was higher than $T_1$ and $T_2$ was higher than $T_1$. Egg weight of $T_1$ and $T_2$was significantly(P＜0.05) heavier than $T_3$. Feed intake of $T_2$ and $T_3$ was significantly(P＜0.05) higher than $T_1$ at 6th wk but overall average was not significantly different. Soft egg production were significantly(P＜0.01) different among treatments：$T_1$ was higher than $T_3$ was higher than $T_2$. Feed efficiency cracked e99 Production and mortality were not signifcantly different. In Experiment 4, egg production tended to increase as the level of live yeast supplementation increased but they were not statistically different. In Experiment 5, egg production of broiler breeders of $T_3$ was significantly(P＜0.01) higher than $T_1$. Feed intake of $T_3$ was significantly(P＜0.05) greater than $T_1$ and $T_2$ at 3rd wk but overall average was not significantly different. Fertility and hatchability tended to be higher in the supplemented groups than in the control.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.41
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• pp.455-486
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• 2015

The 3D printing technology, which started from the patent registration in 1986, was a technology that did not attract attention other than from some companies, due to the lack of awareness at the time. However, today, as expiring patents are appearing after the passage of 20 years, the price of 3D printers have decreased to the level of allowing purchase by individuals and the technology is attracting attention from industries, in addition to the general public, such as by naturally accepting 3D and to share 3D data, based on the generalization of online information exchange and improvement of computer performance. The production capability of 3D printers, which is based on digital data enabling digital transmission and revision and supplementation or production manufacturing not requiring molding, may provide a groundbreaking change to the process of manufacturing, and may attain the same effect in the character merchandise sector. Using a 3D printer is becoming a necessity in various figure merchandise productions which are in the forefront of the kidult culture that is recently gaining attention, and when predicting the demand by the industrial sites related to such character merchandise and when considering the more inexpensive price due to the expiration of patents and sharing of technology, expanding opportunities and sectors of employment and cultivating manpower that are able to engage in further creative work seems as a must, by introducing education courses cultivating manpower that can utilize 3D printers at the education field. However, there are limits in the information that can be obtained when seeking to introduce 3D printers in school education. Because the press or information media only mentions general information, such as the growth of the industrial size or prosperous future value of 3D printers, the research level of the academic world also remains at the level of organizing contents in an introductory level, such as by analyzing data on industrial size, analyzing the applicable scope in the industry, or introducing the printing technology. Such lack of information gives rise to problems at the education site. There would be no choice but to incur temporal and opportunity expenses, since the technology would only be able to be used after going through trials and errors, by first introducing the technology without examining the actual information, such as through comparing the strengths and weaknesses. In particular, if an expensive equipment introduced does not suit the features of school education, the loss costs would be significant. This research targeted general users without a technology-related basis, instead of specialists. By comparing the strengths and weaknesses and analyzing the problems and matters requiring notice upon use, pursuant to the representative technologies, instead of merely introducing the 3D printer technology as had been done previously, this research sought to explain the types of features that a 3D printer should have, in particular, when required in education relating to the development of figure merchandise as an optional cultural contents at cartoon-related departments, and sought to provide information that can be of practical help when seeking to provide education using 3D printers in the future. In the main body, the technologies were explained by making a classification based on a new perspective, such as the buttress method, types of materials, two-dimensional printing method, and three-dimensional printing method. The reason for selecting such different classification method was to easily allow mutual comparison of the practical problems upon use. In conclusion, the most suitable 3D printer was selected as the printer in the FDM method, which is comparatively cheap and requires low repair and maintenance cost and low materials expenses, although rather insufficient in the quality of outputs, and a recommendation was made, in addition, to select an entity that is supportive in providing technical support.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2010

The anthropomorphism of brands, defined as seeing human beings in brands (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rosereto, 2008) is the focus of this study. Specifically, the research objective is to understand the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike. By analyzing consumer readings of stories found on food product packages we intend to show how marketers and consumers humanize a spectrum of brands and create meanings. Our research question considers the possibility that a single brand may host multiple or single meanings, associations, and personalities for different consumers. We start by highlighting the theoretical and practical significance of our research, explain why we turn our attention to packages as vehicles of brand meaning transfer, then describe our qualitative methodology, discuss findings, and conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and directions for future studies. The study was designed to directly expose consumers to potential vehicles of brand meaning transfer and then engage these consumers in free verbal reflections on their perceived meanings. Specifically, we asked participants to read non-nutritional stories on selected branded food packages, in order to elicit data about received meanings. Packaging has yet to receive due attention in consumer research (Hine, 1995). Until now, attention has focused solely on its utilitarian function and has generated a body of research that has explored the impact of nutritional information and claims on consumer perceptions of products (e.g., Loureiro, McCluskey and Mittelhammer, 2002; Mazis and Raymond, 1997; Nayga, Lipinski and Savur, 1998; Wansik, 2003). An exception is a recent study that turns its attention to non-nutritional packaging narratives and treats them as cultural productions and vehicles for mythologizing the brand (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). The next step in this stream of research is to explore how such mythologizing activity affects brand personality perception and how these perceptions relate to consumers. These are the questions that our study aimed to address. We used in-depth interviews to help overcome the limitations of quantitative studies. Our convenience sample was formed with the objective of providing demographic and psychographic diversity in order to elicit variations in consumer reflections to food packaging stories. Our informants represent middle-class residents of the US and do not exhibit extreme alternative lifestyles described by Thompson as "cultural creatives" (2004). Nine people were individually interviewed on their food consumption preferences and behavior. Participants were asked to have a look at the twelve displayed food product packages and read all the textual information on the package, after which we continued with questions that focused on the consumer interpretations of the reading material (Scott and Batra, 2003). On average, each participant reflected on 4-5 packages. Our in-depth interviews lasted one to one and a half hours each. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, providing 140 pages of text. The products came from local grocery stores on the West Coast of the US and represented a basic range of food product categories, including snacks, canned foods, cereals, baby foods, and tea. The data were analyzed using procedures for developing grounded theory delineated by Strauss and Corbin (1998). As a result, our study does not support the notion of one brand/one personality as assumed by prior work. Thus, we reveal multiple brand personalities peacefully cohabiting in the same brand as seen by different consumers, despite marketer attempts to create more singular brand personalities. We extend Fournier's (1998) proposition, that one's life projects shape the intensity and nature of brand relationships. We find that these life projects also affect perceived brand personifications and meanings. While Fournier provides a conceptual framework that links together consumers’ life themes (Mick and Buhl, 1992) and relational roles assigned to anthropomorphized brands, we find that consumer life projects mold both the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike and the ways in which brands connect to consumers' existential concerns. We find two modes through which brands are anthropomorphized by our participants. First, brand personalities are created by seeing them through perceived demographic, psychographic, and social characteristics that are to some degree shared by consumers. Second, brands in our study further relate to consumers' existential concerns by either being blended with consumer personalities in order to connect to them (the brand as a friend, a family member, a next door neighbor) or by distancing themselves from the brand personalities and estranging them (the brand as a used car salesman, a "bunch of executives.") By focusing on food product packages, we illuminate a very specific, widely-used, but little-researched vehicle of marketing communication: brand storytelling. Recent work that has approached packages as mythmakers, finds it increasingly challenging for marketers to produce textual stories that link the personalities of products to the personalities of those consuming them, and suggests that "a multiplicity of building material for creating desired consumer myths is what a postmodern consumer arguably needs" (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). Used as vehicles for storytelling, food packages can exploit both rational and emotional approaches, offering consumers either a "lecture" or "drama" (Randazzo, 2006), myths (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004), or meanings (McCracken, 2005) as necessary building blocks for anthropomorphizing their brands. The craft of giving birth to brand personalities is in the hands of writers/marketers and in the minds of readers/consumers who individually and sometimes idiosyncratically put a meaningful human face on a brand.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.125-148
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• 2009

UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.