• Title/Summary/Keyword: ubiquitous environments

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Separation of Nanomaterials Using Flow Field-Flow Fractionation (흐름 장-흐름 분획기를 이용한 나노물질의 분리)

  • Kim, Sung-Hee;Lee, Woo-Chun;Kim, Soon-Oh;Na, So-Young;Kim, Hyun-A;Lee, Byung-Tae;Lee, Byoung-Cheun;Eom, Ig-Chun
    • Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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    • v.35 no.11
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    • pp.835-860
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    • 2013
  • Recently, the consumption of nanomaterials has been significantly increased in both industrial and commercial sectors, as a result of steady advancement in the nano-technologies. This ubiquitous use of nanomaterials has brought up the concern that their exposure to environments may cause detrimental effects on human health as well as natural ecosystems, and it is required to characterize their behavior in various environmental media and to evaluate their ecotoxicity. For the sake of accomplishing those assessments, the development of methods to effectively separate them from diverse media and to quantify their properties should be requisitely accompanied. Among a number of separation techniques developed so far, this study focuses on Field-Flow Fractionation (FFF) because of its strengths, such as relatively less disturbance of samples and simple pretreatment, and we review overseas and domestic literatures on the separation of nanomaterials using the FFF technique. In particular, researches with Flow Field-Flow Fractionation (FlFFF) are highlighted due to its most frequent application among FFF techniques. The basic principle of the FlFFF is briefly introduced and the studies conducted so far are classified and scrutinized based on the sort of target nanomaterials for the purpose of furnishing practical data and information for the researchers struggling in this field. The literature review suggests that the operational conditions, such as pretreatment, selection of membrane and carrier solution, and rate (velocity) of each flow, should be optimized in order to effectively separate them from various matrices using the FFF technique. Moreover, it seems to be a prerequisite to couple or hyphenate with several detectors and analyzers for quantification of their properties after their separation using the FFF. However, its application has been restricted regarding the types of target nanomaterials and environmental media. Furthermore, domestic literature data on both separation and characterization of nanomaterials are extremely limited. Taking into account the overwhelmingly increasing consumption of nanomaterials, the efforts for the area seem to be greatly urgent.

An Empirical Study on the Influencing Factors of Perceived Job Performance in the Context of Enterprise Mobile Applications (업무성과에 영향을 주는 업무용 모바일 어플리케이션의 주요 요인에 관한 연구)

  • Chung, Sunghun;Kim, Kimin
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.31-50
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    • 2014
  • The ubiquitous accessibility of information through mobile devices has led to an increased mobility of workers from their fixed workplaces. Market researchers estimate that by 2016, 350 million workers will be using their smartphones for business purposes, and the use of smartphones will offer new business benefits. Enterprises are now adopting mobile technologies for numerous applications to increase their operational efficiency, improve their responsiveness and competitiveness, and cultivate their innovativeness. For these reasons, various organizational aspects concerning "mobile work" have received a great deal of recent attention. Moreover, many CIOs plan to allocate a considerable amount of their budgets mobile work environments. In particular, with the consumerization of information technology, enterprise mobile applications (EMA) have played a significant role in the explosive growth of mobile computing in the workplace, and even in improving sales for firms in this field. EMA can be defined as mobile technologies and role-based applications, as companies design them for specific roles and functions in organizations. Technically, EMA can be defined as business enterprise systems, including critical business functions that enable users to access enterprise systems via wireless mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Specifically, EMA enables employees to have greater access to real-time information, and provides them with simple features and functionalities that are easy for them to complete specific tasks. While the impact of EMA on organizational workers' productivity has been given considerable attention in various literatures, relatively little research effort has been made to examine how EMA actually lead to users' job performance. In particular, we have a limited understanding of what the key antecedents are of such an EMA usage outcome. In this paper, we focus on employees' perceived job performance as the outcome of EMA use, which indicates the successful role of EMA with regard to employees' tasks. Thus, to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship among EMA, its environment, and employees' perceived job performance, we develop a comprehensive model that considers the perceived-fit between EMA and employees' tasks, satisfaction on EMA, and the organizational environment. With this model, we try to examine EMA to explain how job performance through EMA is revealed from both the task-technology fit for EMA and satisfaction on EMA, while also considering the antecedent factors for these constructs. The objectives of this study are to address the following research questions: (1) How can employees successfully manage EMA in order to enhance their perceived job performance? (2) What internal and/or external factors are important antecedents in increasing EMA users' satisfaction on MES and task-technology fit for EMA? (3) What are the impacts of organizational (e.g. organizational agility), and task-related antecedents (e.g., task mobility) on task-technology fit for EMA? (4) What are the impacts of internal (e.g., self-efficacy) and external antecedents (e.g., system reputation) for the habitual use of EMA? Based on a survey from 254 actual employees who use EMA in their workplace across industries, our results indicate that task-technology fit for EMA and satisfaction on EMA are positively associated with job performance. We also identify task mobility, organizational agility, and system accessibility that are found to be positively associated with task-technology fit for EMA. Further, we find that external factor, such as the reputation of EMA, and internal factor, such as self-efficacy for EMA that are found to be positively associated with the satisfaction of EMA. The present findings enable researchers and practitioners to understand the role of EMA, which facilitates organizational workers' efficient work processes, as well as the importance of task-technology fit for EMA. Our model provides a new set of antecedents and consequence variables for a TAM involving mobile applications. The research model also provides empirical evidence that EMA are important mobile services that positively influence individuals' performance. Our findings suggest that perceived organizational agility and task mobility do have a significant influence on task-technology fit for EMA usage through positive beliefs about EMA, that self-efficacy and system reputation can also influence individuals' satisfaction on EMA, and that these factors are important contingent factors for the impact of system satisfaction and perceived job performance. Our findings can help managers gauge the impact of EMA in terms of its contribution to job performance. Our results provide an explanation as to why many firms have recently adopted EMA for efficient business processes and productivity support. Our findings additionally suggest that the cognitive fit between task and technology can be an important requirement for the productivity support of EMA. Further, our study findings can help managers in formulating their strategies and building organizational culture that can affect employees perceived job performance. Managers, thus, can tailor their dependence on EMA as high or low, depending on their task's characteristics, to maximize the job performance in the workplace. Overall, this study strengthens our knowledge regarding the impact of mobile applications in organizational contexts, technology acceptance and the role of task characteristics. To conclude, we hope that our research inspires future studies exploring digital productivity in the workplace and/or taking the role of EMA into account for employee job performance.

A Study about the Direction and Responsibility of the National Intelligence Agency to the Cyber Security Issues (사이버 안보에 대한 국가정보기구의 책무와 방향성에 대한 고찰)

  • Han, Hee-Won
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.39
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    • pp.319-353
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    • 2014
  • Cyber-based technologies are now ubiquitous around the glob and are emerging as an "instrument of power" in societies, and are becoming more available to a country's opponents, who may use it to attack, degrade, and disrupt communications and the flow of information. The globe-spanning range of cyberspace and no national borders will challenge legal systems and complicate a nation's ability to deter threats and respond to contingencies. Through cyberspace, competitive powers will target industry, academia, government, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains of our nations. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional hackers. In much the same way that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication. Cyberthreats to the infrastructure and other assets are a growing concern to policymakers. In 2013 Cyberwarfare was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al Qaeda or terrorism, by many U.S. intelligence officials. The new United States military strategy makes explicit that a cyberattack is casus belli just as a traditional act of war. The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare and writes that China, Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran are boasting of having the world's second-largest cyber-army. Entities posing a significant threat to the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure assets include cyberterrorists, cyberspies, cyberthieves, cyberwarriors, and cyberhacktivists. These malefactors may access cyber-based technologies in order to deny service, steal or manipulate data, or use a device to launch an attack against itself or another piece of equipment. However because the Internet offers near-total anonymity, it is difficult to discern the identity, the motives, and the location of an intruder. The scope and enormity of the threats are not just focused to private industry but also to the country's heavily networked critical infrastructure. There are many ongoing efforts in government and industry that focus on making computers, the Internet, and related technologies more secure. As the national intelligence institution's effort, cyber counter-intelligence is measures to identify, penetrate, or neutralize foreign operations that use cyber means as the primary tradecraft methodology, as well as foreign intelligence service collection efforts that use traditional methods to gauge cyber capabilities and intentions. However one of the hardest issues in cyber counterintelligence is the problem of "Attribution". Unlike conventional warfare, figuring out who is behind an attack can be very difficult, even though the Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has claimed that the United States has the capability to trace attacks back to their sources and hold the attackers "accountable". Considering all these cyber security problems, this paper examines closely cyber security issues through the lessons from that of U.S experience. For that purpose I review the arising cyber security issues considering changing global security environments in the 21st century and their implications to the reshaping the government system. For that purpose this study mainly deals with and emphasis the cyber security issues as one of the growing national security threats. This article also reviews what our intelligence and security Agencies should do among the transforming cyber space. At any rate, despite of all hot debates about the various legality and human rights issues derived from the cyber space and intelligence service activity, the national security should be secured. Therefore, this paper suggests that one of the most important and immediate step is to understanding the legal ideology of national security and national intelligence.

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X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy Study on Surface Interaction of Arsenite onto Two-Line Ferrihydrite at pHs 4 and 10 (pH 4와 10에서의 3가 비소와 Two-Line Ferrihydrite의 표면반응에 대한 X선 흡수 분광 연구)

  • Lee, Woo-Chun;Choi, Sun-Hee;Cho, Hyen-Goo;Kim, Soon-Oh
    • Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.73-82
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    • 2011
  • X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) study was conducted using arsenite-sorbed two-line ferrihydrite to investigate the mechanism of surface interactions between two-line ferrihydrite and As(III) (arsenite) which are ubiquitous in nature. The two-line ferrihydrite used was synthesized in the laboratory and the study was undertaken at pHs 4 and 10 to compare the difference in mechanisms of surface interaction between acidic and alkaline environments. The effect of arsenite-adsorbed concentrations on surface complexation was investigated at each pH condition as well. From the results of XAS analyses, the structural parameters of arsenite in the EXAFS revealed that the coordination number and distanceof As-O were 3.1~3.3 and 1.74~1.79 ${\AA}$, respectively, which indicate that the unit structure of arsenite complex formed on the surface of two-line ferrihydrite is $AsO_3$. The dominant structures of As(III)-Fe complex were examined to be bidentate binuclear comer-sharing ($^2C$) and the mixture of bidentate mononuclear edge sharing ($^2E$) and $^2C$ appeared as well. At pH 4, arsenite complex showed different structures on the surface of two-line ferrihydrite, depending on the adsorbed concentrations. At pH 10, on the contrary, the surface structures of arsenite complexes were interpreted to be almost identical, irrespective of the adsorbed concentrations of arsenite. Consequently, this microscopic XAS results support the results of macroscopic adsorption experiments in which the surface interaction between arsenite and two-line ferrihydrite is significantly influenced by pH conditions as well as arsenite concentrations.