• 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.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.84.2-84.2
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• 2015

There are probabilistic forecast models for solar flare occurrence, which can be evaluated by various skill scores (e.g. accuracy, critical success index, heidek skill score, true skill score). Since these skill scores assume that two types of forecast errors (i.e. false alarm and miss) are equal or constant, which does not take into account different situations of users, they may be unrealistic. In this study, we make an evaluation of a probabilistic flare forecast model (Lee et al. 2012) which use sunspot groups and its area changes as a proxy of flux emergence. We calculate daily solar flare probabilities from 1996 to 2014 using this model. Overall frequencies are 61.08% (C), 22.83% (M), and 5.44% (X). The maximum probabilities computed by the model are 99.9% (C), 89.39% (M), and 25.45% (X), respectively. The skill scores are computed through contingency tables as a function of forecast probability, which corresponds to the maximum skill score depending on flare class and type of a skill score. For the critical success index widely used, the probability threshold values for contingency tables are 25% (C), 20% (M), and 4% (X). We use a value score with cost/loss ratio, relative importance between the two types of forecast errors. We find that the forecast model has an effective range of cost/loss ratio for each class flare: 0.15-0.83(C), 0.11-0.51(M), and 0.04-0.17(X), also depending on a lifetime of satellite. We expect that this study would provide a guideline to determine the probability threshold for space weather forecast.

• Journal of Haehwa Medicine
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.53-63
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• 2012

Objectives : The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Chunghwatang (CHT) for atopic dermatitis. Methods : CHT, a verified anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effect, was treated in atopic dermatitis animal model to investigate cytokine levels and immunoglobulin production. Results : Clinical skin index was 47.1%, suggesting significant efficacy of CHT in atopic dermatitis treatment. Serum IL-4, IL-6, IL-13, TNF-${\alpha}$ and histamine productions were significantly decreased to 52.3%, 61.8%, 68.0%, 37.4%, and 46.6%, respectively. The production of IL-5 was decreased to 33.3%. The increase of Immunoglobulin IgG1 production along with IgE through the interaction of IgE and IL-4 induced by IL-4 and IL-13 were measured as 20.7% and 23.4%, respectively. Conclusions : The results above, along with the in vitro test results, strongly supports the CHT samples as effective immunomodulator in AD treatments, suggesting its use in clinical practice and basic information for EBM.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.3-34
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• 2016

This introduction is both a statement of a research problem and an account of the first research results for its solution. As more historical databases come online and overlap in coverage, we need to discuss the two main issues that prevent 'big' results from emerging so far. Firstly, historical data are seen by computer science people as unstructured, that is, historical records cannot be easily decomposed into unambiguous fields, like in population (birth and death records) and taxation data. Secondly, machine-learning tools developed for structured data cannot be applied as they are for historical research. We propose a complex network, narrative-driven approach to mining historical databases. In such a time-integrated network obtained by overlaying records from historical databases, the nodes are actors, while thelinks are actions. In the case study that we present (the world as seen from Venice, 1205-1533), the actors are governments, while the actions are limited to war, trade, and treaty to keep the case study tractable. We then identify key periods, key events, and hence key actors, key locations through a time-resolved examination of the actions. This tool allows historians to deal with historical data issues (e.g., source provenance identification, event validation, trade-conflict-diplomacy relationships, etc.). On a higher level, this automatic extraction of key narratives from a historical database allows historians to formulate hypotheses on the courses of history, and also allow them to test these hypotheses in other actions or in additional data sets. Our vision is that this narrative-driven analysis of historical data can lead to the development of multiple scale agent-based models, which can be simulated on a computer to generate ensembles of counterfactual histories that would deepen our understanding of how our actual history developed the way it did. The generation of such narratives, automatically and in a scalable way, will revolutionize the practice of history as a discipline, because historical knowledge, that is the treasure of human experiences (i.e. the heritage of the world), will become what might be inherited by machine learning algorithms and used in smart cities to highlight and explain present ties and illustrate potential future scenarios and visionarios.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.641-647
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• 2016

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease characterized by vascular remodeling of pulmonary arteries (PAs) and increased vascular resistance in the lung. Monocrotaline (MCT), a toxic alkaloid, is widely used for developing rat models of PAH caused by injury to pulmonary endothelial cells; however, characteristics of vascular functions in MCT-induced PAH vary and are not fully understood. Here, we investigated hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) responses and effects of various vasoconstrictors with isolated/perfused lungs of MCT-induced PAH (PAH-MCT) rats. Using hematoxylin and eosin staining, we confirmed vascular remodeling (i.e., medial thickening of PA) and right ventricle hypertrophy in PAH-MCT rats. The basal pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) and PAP increase by a raised flow rate (40 mL/min) were higher in the PAH-MCT than in the control rats. In addition, both high $K^+$ (40 mM KCl)- and angiotensin II-induced PAP increases were higher in the PAH-MCT than in the control rats. Surprisingly, application of a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, L-$N^G$-Nitroarginine methyl ester (L-NAME), induced a marked PAP increase in the PAH-MCT rats, suggesting that endothelial functions were recovered in the three-week PAH-MCT rats. In addition, the medial thickening of the PA was similar to that in chronic hypoxia-induced PAH (PAH-CH) rats. However, the HPV response (i.e., PAP increased by acute hypoxia) was not affected in the MCT rats, whereas HPV disappeared in the PAH-CH rats. These results showed that vascular contractility and HPV remain robust in the MCT-induced PAH rat model with vascular remodeling.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.51-55
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• 2012

A few high-mass X-ray binaries-consisting of an OB star plus compact companion-have been observed by Fermi and ground-based Cerenkov telescopes like High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) to be sources of very high energy (VHE; up to 30 TeV) ${\gamma}$-rays. This paper focuses on the prominent ${\gamma}$-ray source, LS 5039, which consists of a massive O6.5V star in a 3.9-day-period, mildly elliptical ($e{\approx}0.24$) orbit with its companion, assumed here to be an unmagnetized compact object (e.g., black hole). Using three dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of the Bondi-Hoyle accretion of the O-star wind onto the companion, we find that the orbital phase variation of the accretion follows very closely the simple Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) rate for the local radius and wind speed. Moreover, a simple model, wherein intrinsic emission of ${\gamma}$-rays is assumed to track this accretion rate, reproduces quite well Fermi observations of the phase variation of ${\gamma}$-rays in the energy range 0.1-10 GeV. However for the VHE (0.1-30 TeV) radiation observed by the HESS Cerenkov telescope, it is important to account also for photon-photon interactions between the ${\gamma}$-rays and the stellar optical/UV radiation, which effectively attenuates much of the strong emission near periastron. When this is included, we find that this simple BHL accretion model also quite naturally fits the HESS light curve, thus making it a strong alternative to the pulsar-wind-shock models commonly invoked to explain such VHE ${\gamma}$-ray emission in massive-star binaries.

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.293-304
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• 2015

This study examined the factors which have influence on the welfare facilities for the elderly and analyzes their efficiency. It investigated theoretical studies and preceding studies and divided the efficiency evaluation factors into input and output factors. Input factors included budget, the number of workers and clients and facility area and output factors were operation management, the number of clients, profitability and welfare for the elderly. To sum up the analysis results of evaluation factors of welfare facilities for the elderly, the analysis of relative importance of input showed that budget was most important. As a result of analyzing the relative importance among detailed items, balance sheet and professional manpower were highest. Input factors by facility types showed that the budget for utility facilities and living facilities were highest. In output factors, utility facilities and living facilities were highest in management systematization and welfare for the elderly, respectively. In efficiency evaluation, utility facilities for the elderly showed 100% of efficiency in CCR and BCC models. In welfare facilities for the elderly, while CCR model showed 100% of efficiency in facility types A, C, D, and F, the efficiency was low in facility B (79.89%), E (77.14%), and G (80.72%). In BCC model, facility E was low as 78.69%. In efficiency comparison between utility facilities and living facilities for the elderly welfare, the efficiency of utility facilities for the elderly welfare was higher. Therefore, this study investigated the efficiency of welfare facilities for the elderly as its main purpose and presented policy suggestions based on the research results as the alternative.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.667-675
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• 2018

When a financial time series consists of daily (closing) returns, traditional volatility models such as autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) and generalized ARCH (GARCH) are useful to figure out daily volatilities. With high frequency returns in a day, one may adopt various multivariate GARCH techniques (MGARCH) (Tsay, Multivariate Time Series Analysis With R and Financial Application, John Wiley, 2014) to obtain intraday volatilities as long as the high frequency is moderate. When it comes to the ultra high frequency (UHF) case (e.g., one minute prices are available everyday), a new model needs to be developed to suit UHF time series in order to figure out continuous time intraday-volatilities. Aue et al. (Journal of Time Series Analysis, 38, 3-21; 2017) proposed functional GARCH (fGARCH) to analyze functional volatilities based on UHF data. This article introduces fGARCH to the readers and illustrates how to estimate fGARCH equations using UHF data of KOSPI and Hyundai motor company.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.80.1-80.1
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• 2016

There are probabilistic forecast models for solar flare occurrence, which can be evaluated by various skill scores (e.g. accuracy, critical success index, heidek skill score, and true skill score). Since these skill scores assume that two types of forecast errors (i.e. false alarm and miss) are equal or constant, which does not take into account different situations of users, they may be unrealistic. In this study, we make an evaluation of a probabilistic flare forecast model [Lee et al., 2012] which use sunspot groups and its area changes as a proxy of flux emergence. We calculate daily solar flare probabilities from 2011 to 2014 using this model. The skill scores are computed through contingency tables as a function of forecast probability, which corresponds to the maximum skill score depending on flare class and type of a skill score. We use a value score with cost/loss ratio, relative importance between the two types of forecast errors. The forecast probability (y) is linearly changed with the cost/loss ratio (x) in the form of y=ax+b: a=0.88; b=0 (C), a=1.2; b=-0.05(M), a=1.29; b=-0.02(X). We find that the forecast model has an effective range of cost/loss ratio for each class flare: 0.536-0.853(C), 0.147-0.334(M), and 0.023-0.072(X). We expect that this study would provide a guideline to determine the probability threshold and the cost/loss ratio for space weather forecast.

• Diabetes and Metabolism Journal
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.488-495
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• 2018

Background: Skeletal muscle plays a major role in glucose metabolism. We investigated the association between thigh muscle mass, insulin resistance, and incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) risk. In addition, we examined the role of body mass index (BMI) as a potential effect modifier in this association. Methods: This prospective study included 399 Japanese Americans without diabetes (mean age 51.6 years) who at baseline had an estimation of thigh muscle mass by computed tomography and at baseline and after 10 years of follow-up a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test and determination of homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). We fit regression models to examine the association between thigh muscle area and incidence of T2DM and change in HOMA-IR, both measured over 10 years. Results: Thigh muscle area was inversely associated with future HOMA-IR after adjustment for age, sex, BMI, HOMA-IR, fasting plasma glucose, total abdominal fat area, and thigh subcutaneous fat area at baseline (P=0.033). The 10-year cumulative incidence of T2DM was 22.1%. A statistically significant interaction between thigh muscle area and BMI was observed, i.e., greater thigh muscle area was associated with lower risk of incident T2DM for subjects at lower levels of BMI, but this association diminished at higher BMI levels. Conclusion: Thigh muscle mass area was inversely associated with future insulin resistance. Greater thigh muscle area predicts a lower risk of incident T2DM for leaner Japanese Americans.