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Rainfed Areas and Animal Agriculture in Asia: The Wanting Agenda for Transforming Productivity Growth and Rural Poverty

  • Devendra, C.
    • Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.122-142
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    • 2012
  • The importance of rainfed areas and animal agriculture on productivity enhancement and food security for economic rural growth in Asia is discussed in the context of opportunities for increasing potential contribution from them. The extent of the rainfed area of about 223 million hectares and the biophysical attributes are described. They have been variously referred to inter alia as fragile, marginal, dry, waste, problem, threatened, range, less favoured, low potential lands, forests and woodlands, including lowlands and uplands. Of these, the terms less favoured areas (LFAs), and low or high potential are quite widely used. The LFAs are characterised by four key features: i) very variable biophysical elements, notably poor soil quality, rainfall, length of growing season and dry periods, ii) extreme poverty and very poor people who continuously face hunger and vulnerability, iii) presence of large populations of ruminant animals (buffaloes, cattle, goats and sheep), and iv) have had minimum development attention and an unfinished wanting agenda. The rainfed humid/sub-humid areas found mainly in South East Asia (99 million ha), and arid/semi-arid tropical systems found in South Asia (116 million ha) are priority agro-ecological zones (AEZs). In India for example, the ecosystem occupies 68% of the total cultivated area and supports 40% of the human and 65% of the livestock populations. The area also produces 4% of food requirements. The biophysical and typical household characteristics, agricultural diversification, patterns of mixed farming and cropping systems are also described. Concerning animals, their role and economic importance, relevance of ownership, nomadic movements, and more importantly their potential value as the entry point for the development of LFAs is discussed. Two examples of demonstrated success concern increasing buffalo production for milk and their expanded use in semi-arid AEZs in India, and the integration of cattle and goats with oil palm in Malaysia. Revitalised development of the LFAs is justified by the demand for agricultural land to meet human needs e.g. housing, recreation and industrialisation; use of arable land to expand crop production to ceiling levels; increasing and very high animal densities; increased urbanisation and pressure on the use of available land; growing environmental concerns of very intensive crop production e.g. acidification and salinisation with rice cultivation; and human health risks due to expanding peri-urban poultry and pig production. The strategies for promoting productivity growth will require concerted R and D on improved use of LFAs, application of systems perspectives for technology delivery, increased investments, a policy framework and improved farmer-researcher-extension linkages. These challenges and their resolution in rainfed areas can forcefully impact on increased productivity, improved livelihoods and human welfare, and environmental sustainability in the future.

Sodium butyrate has context-dependent actions on dipeptidyl peptidase-4 and other metabolic parameters

  • Lee, Eun-Sol;Lee, Dong-Sung;Pandeya, Prakash Raj;Kim, Youn-Chul;Kang, Dae-Gil;Lee, Ho-Sub;Oh, Byung-Chul;Lee, Dae Ho
    • The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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    • v.21 no.5
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    • pp.519-529
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    • 2017
  • Sodium butyrate (SB) has various metabolic actions. However, its effect on dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) needs to be studied further. We aimed to evaluate the metabolic actions of SB, considering its physiologically relevant concentration. We evaluated the effect of SB on regulation of DPP-4 and its other metabolic actions, both in vitro (HepG2 cells and mouse mesangial cells) and in vivo (high fat diet [HFD]-induced obese mice). Ten-week HFD-induced obese C57BL/6J mice were subjected to SB treatment by adding SB to HFD which was maintained for an additional 16 weeks. In HepG2 cells, SB suppressed DPP-4 activity and expression at sub-molar concentrations, whereas it increased DPP-4 activity at a concentration of $1,000{\mu}M$. In HFD-induced obese mice, SB decreased blood glucose, serum levels of insulin and $IL-1{\beta}$, and DPP-4 activity, and suppressed the increase in body weight. On the contrary, various tissues including liver, kidney, and peripheral blood cells showed variable responses of DPP-4 to SB. Especially in the kidney, although DPP-4 activity was decreased by SB in HFD-induced obese mice, it caused an increase in mRNA expression of $TNF-{\alpha}$, IL-6, and $IL-1{\beta}$. The pro-inflammatory actions of SB in the kidney of HFD-induced obese mice were recapitulated by cultured mesangial cell experiments, in which SB stimulated the secretion of several cytokines from cells. Our results showed that SB has differential actions according to its treatment dose and the type of cells and tissues. Thus, further studies are required to evaluate its therapeutic relevance in metabolic diseases including diabetes and obesity.

Imagining through webtoon: Webtoon-focused convergence education project in middle school (웹툰으로 상상하기: 중학교 웹툰 중심의 융합교육 프로젝트)

  • Park, Yoo-shin;Yim, Se-hee;Jeong, Hyeon-Seon
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.45
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    • pp.451-477
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    • 2016
  • The changes in media environments have impacted on the ways in which knowledges are formed and transmitted and therefore the relevance of the traditional school subjects have been increasingly questioned. In this context, the discourses of the reformation of the 21st century schooling have focused on convergence education and media literacy education. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the practices of transdisciplinary integrated curriculum focusing on digital media content are grown voluntarily in schools. This research is a case study of a convergence educational project that was initiated by a middle school teacher who designed and implemented a unique program of the transdisciplinary class of Korean focusing on reading webtoons with the linked program of a 'Book Club Activity' that was a part of 'Creative Experiential Activitites'. Based on the analysis of the documents, participatory observation of a main event and the interview with the teacher, this article discusses how the webtoon-focused convergence education project might have achieved meaningful connections between a subject-focused learning and a creative experiences-focused learning; between in and out of school learning spaces; between the real and imaginative worlds; and between the boundaries of the popular culture and the arts. The main finding of the research can be summarized as follows: Firstly, webtoon as the subject of the study can be an effective medium of transdisciplinary integrated curriculum. Secondly, the convergence project based on webtoons can create meaningful learning spaces in and out of school environments in terms of creating more learner-participatory learning culture as well as connecting students' everyday lives, popular arts and their learning about culture. Another important finding of this research is the rediscovery of the teacher's role in terms of mediating the voices of students as readers in the process of constructing and implementing the integrated curriculum.

How is Scientific and Technological Knowledge Linked in Technological Innovation in Korea? (우려나라 기술혁신에서의 과학-기술 지식연계 특성분석)

  • Park, Hyun-Woo;Son, Jong-Ku;You, Yeon-Woo
    • Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.1-21
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    • 2011
  • Technical change and technological innovation have become major drivers of economic progress in the knowledge oriented economies where growth, productivity, and competitiveness are increasingly based on improved technologies, novel products, upgraded processes or customized services. The creation of new knowledge, modifying or improving existent knowledge, or imitation of others, has become central to economic development. New discoveries, state-of-the-art information gathering procedures, or successful problem solving routines are often at he core of these innovations. Despite the generally acknowledged importance of science in many high-tech areas of major economic relevance, there is few science-related statistics to be found in high-profile international benchmarking reports. This paper aims to provide an answer by advancing our understanding of the possibilities of indicators quantifying linkages between science and technology. Central are the concepts of innovation capability and science/technology interface, which are used to assemble a wide range of empirical studies and quantitative indicators to summarize their possibilities and limitations for producing comparative statistics. For the purpose of the study, we extracted the US patents by Korean assignees or inventors, scientific papers cited in the patents in order to analyze the characteristics of linkage of scientific knowledge flows. The review focuses on indicators dealing with flows of written or codified information, and indicators of inventiveness that capture the non-codifiable tacit knowledge dimension. General conclusions will be drawn with a view towards further developments in the foreseeable future, suggesting new avenues for the design and implementation of patent-based and inventor-based relationships between scientific research and technical development within the context of regional or national systems of innovation.

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Exploration of relationship between confirmation measures and association thresholds (기준 확인 측도와 연관성 평가기준과의 관계 탐색)

  • Park, Hee Chang
    • Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.835-845
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    • 2013
  • Association rule of data mining techniques is the method to quantify the relevance between a set of items in a big database, andhas been applied in various fields like manufacturing industry, shopping mall, healthcare, insurance, and education. Philosophers of science have proposed interestingness measures for various kinds of patterns, analyzed their theoretical properties, evaluated them empirically, and suggested strategies to select appropriate measures for particular domains and requirements. Such interestingness measures are divided into objective, subjective, and semantic measures. Objective measures are based on data used in the discovery process and are typically motivated by statistical considerations. Subjective measures take into account not only the data but also the knowledge and interests of users who examine the pattern, while semantic measures additionally take into account utility and actionability. In a very different context, researchers have devoted a lot of attention to measures of confirmation or evidential support. The focus in this paper was on asymmetric confirmation measures, and we compared confirmation measures with basic association thresholds using some simulation data. As the result, we could distinguish the direction of association rule by confirmation measures, and interpret degree of association operationally by them. Futhermore, the result showed that the measure by Rips and that by Kemeny and Oppenheim were better than other confirmation measures.

Compensation Committee Quality and Managers' Pay-Performance Sensitivity (보상위원회의 품질과 성과-보상민감도)

  • Choi, Won-Ju
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.35 no.1
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    • pp.173-188
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    • 2016
  • The introduction and operation of compensation committee can affect managers' incentive-compensation system. In this context, The purpose of this paper examines whether managers' pay-performance sensitivity is affected by the quality of the compensation committee(compensation committee size, the proportion of outside directors on the compensation committee, the proportion of directors with 2 or more non additional board seats on the compensation committee) To test this hypothesis, we use a sample of 260 firm-year observations between 2001-2013. The results are as follows. Firstly, we find that no significant relevance between the compensation committee size and pay-performance sensitivity. But the proportion of outside directors on the compensation committee and the proportion of directors with 2 or more non additional board seats on the compensation committee is positively associated with both pay-earnings based performance sensitivity and pay-stock based performance sensitivity. Secondly, we find that the integration quality of the compensation committee is positively associated with both pay-earnings based performance sensitivity and pay-stock based performance sensitivity. Overall, our analysis suggests that compensation committee are important mechanism in the design of efficient incentive-compensation system.

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Production Characteristics and Efficiency of Korean Railroad Industry using a Distance Function (거리함수를 이용한 한국 철도산업의 생산특성 및 효율성 분석)

  • Kim, Seong-Ho
    • Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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    • v.24 no.5 s.91
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    • pp.45-56
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    • 2006
  • In order to construct an information pool on the production characteristics and efficiency of Korean railroad industry, various alternative approaches have to be applied. In this paper we present an empirical application of the distance function to measure the technical efficiency and the production characteristics of Korean railroad industry, The distance function firstly introduced by Shephard (1953) provides the advantage that it does not need information about prices, so it can accommodate the multiple output nature of the railway only using the quantifies as data. This is of great relevance in the context of the public sector such as railroad industry where there are often distinct control mechanisms on input prices. Also the distance function allows us to obtain a measure of technical efficiency as well as a measure of production characteristics. From annual data on Korean railroad industry during 1964-2004, multiple output distance function is estimated using quadratic programming model. The resulting technical efficiency estimates has tended to be improved over the period $1980{\sim}2004$. The indirect Morishima elasticities of substitution indicate that the substitutabilities for labor are relatively very low or impossible. The average scale elasticity is 2.7 which means that increasing the scale by 1per cent will result in an output increase by 2.7 percent. This result indicates that economies of scale are present in the Korean railroad industry.

The study on the policy of systematical management of the records collected from abroad (해외소재 한국학관련 역사기록의 정보화 방안 연구)

  • Chung, Hye-Kyung;Kim, Sung-Sik
    • The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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    • no.1
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    • pp.137-188
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    • 2000
  • Korea was highly successful in maintaining a strong tradition of record preservation. However, Japanese imperialism and the Korean war over this century has seen a huge quantity of these once plentiful records either destroyed or relocated overseas. Many of Korea records remain in the custody of foreign archival institutions. Additionally, many records of foreign states concerned with korean affairs, for example, records of the Department of state, in the U.S.A., are of great relevance to Korean modern history. These records which exist in foreign countries are a necessary and invaluable resource in the advancement of Korea studies. After the 1980s, as research interest in Korean modern history increased gradually, much historical material related to Korea was extensively introduced, removed, collected from the U.S.A., Japan, Russia and China etc. by the efforts of pioneering scholars and institutions. Several attempts at collating and publishing this material have been made. Despite this encouraging result, individual scholars and institutions's efforts face problems in relation to removal of records. Firstly, it is repeated nonproductively to remove and collect the same records, for we didn't establish a comprehensive information system, through which the condition of foreign record removal and management is able to be administrated. Secondly, there is no system for arrangement, preservation, use of removed records. For example, finding aids, such as inventory, register, description, isn't prepared for user. A user may usually not understand an accurate context of their creation, preservation removal. Thirdly, almost institution has arranged the removed records among other materials and books. Each institution has a different classification criteria, too. These conditions seem to make a difficulty in national management. This study investigated how the materials for Korea history which has been removed from foreign countries should be managed for effective preservation and use. For these purpose, we investigated the present conditions of removal and management of these materials. Also, we investigated examples of the foreign state, U.S.A. and Japan to have a idea for removal and management policy. Then, This study propose a establishment of information network system as management policy. To administrate removing and managing records effectively, an idea that records belong to the public should be accepted commonly. The policy for management of the record is followings. Firstly, unification of classification is necessary. The records which were removed from foreign countries had better to be classified according to their origins of states and institutions. Secondly, Finding aids should be prepared for user. There are many accession aids such as catalog, register, inventory for user in archives. This will be a efficient method for management. When a record is removed, a card for description of contents must be composed. Thirdly, a digital input and network system establishment is necessary. It will help to manage a condition of removed records. A digital input and management system establishment is not just a project of digitalizing records. At present, various finding aids need to be introduced to make a database for records and archives. An search using only 'search engine' may make a difficulty in finding materials because such method is apt to have too much or little result. So, classification, arrangement, description, response-service should be integrated in these system. The recent technical advancement give a opportunity to realize this idea. Above all, these procedure should be archival process.

Making a Linguistic Connection for Interdisciplinary Research between Conservation Science and Ceramic History: The Case of 『Analytical Report of the Royal Kiln Complex at Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province』 (융합적 연구를 위한 도자기 보존과학과 도자사학 언어의 접목: 『경기도 광주관요 종합분석 보고서』를 중심으로)

  • Moon, Jiho
    • Journal of Conservation Science
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    • v.36 no.6
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    • pp.578-590
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    • 2020
  • During the 1960-1970s, a group of ceramic conservation scientists and ceramic historians in South Korea came together and established their own disciplines. While the two disciplines share the same ceramics as the subjects of their research, there has been little interaction between the two as their research outputs are articulated in remarkably different languages. This paper aims to address the following questions by using a case study that focuses on the research on white porcelains centered on the project of Gyeonggi Museum and a series of studies conducted by one of the museum's project research teams. First, what are the characteristics of and differences between the explanation styles of the two disciplines that share the same research subjects of ceramics? Second, why has the communication between the two disciplines become difficult? Third, if there can be a trading zone wherein the two disciplines would be able to communicate again, what would be its epistemic conditions? The focus of this paper is the relationship between scientific data and ordinary language, which the two disciplines have shared from their inception. By analyzing the relationship, I first argue that, as the analytical techniques of conservation science have become more developed, conservation science's data have gradually lost its relevance in ceramic history, in spite of a shared common language between them; Second, I argue that by recovering the import of shared language again, the scientific data can be placed in a different practical context, providing novel interpretations that are relevant and often consequential to ceramic history.

Assessment of Legal Instruments and Applicability to the Use of Electronic Bills of Lading

  • Lee, Un-Ho
    • Journal of Korea Trade
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.31-52
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    • 2020
  • Purpose - This study mainly investigates two potential legal regimes expected to govern the use of electronic bills of lading: the Rotterdam Rules (2009) and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (2017). Widespread use of electronic bills of lading has been unsuccessful partly due to the absence of a uniform legal regime and protracted uncertainties. This paper aims to carry out an assessment of the possibilities where either of two potential legal regimes could provide certainty to the effect and validity of the use of electronic bills of lading, and contribute to the facilitation of electronically transferring the rights to goods carried by sea. Design/methodology - This paper first introduces two legal instruments and the relevance to electronic bills of lading. Since neither of these legal instruments has yet entered into force, the following section looks into the ratification or enactment possibilities based on a literature review and track records of the past legal regimes of the same kind. Assessment of the different adoption possibilities further requires comparative work of the two legal instruments, which will be based on an analysis of relevant provisions and a literature review. The literature review on the Rotterdam Rules delves into various studies and data produced since the UNCITRAL's adoption in 2009. The literature review on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records heavily relies on UNCITRAL working group documents from 2011 to 2017 together with the final explanatory note. Findings - The main findings can be summarized as follows. Application of the Rotterdam Rules would negate the role of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records assisting in the implementation of the Rotterdam Rules due to some conflicting issues. Enactment of the UNCITRAL Model Law alone can sufficiently provide a higher level of certainty in the use and effect of electronic bills of lading so long as lawmakers and parties are aware of some issues with the application. What concerns potential users most is the extension of the status quo, where neither of the legal instruments have any effect. It is necessary to take a number of alternatives into consideration, such as promotion of standard clauses and confirmation by a court ruling. Originality/value - Existing studies focus either on the Rotterdam Rules or on the UNCITRAL Model Law, but not both. Not many papers have yet dealt with the Model Law, which was adopted by UNCITRAL only 2 years ago, particularly in the context of a potential legal regime for electronic bills of lading. This paper attempts to introduce the differences between the two legal instruments in regulating the use of electronic bills of lading while providing an assessment of the various possibilities for which parties involved in international trade can be better prepared for the changing legal environment.