• Proceedings of the Plant Resources Society of Korea Conference
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• 2019.10a
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• pp.32-32
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• 2019

The aim of this study was to provide basic guidelines for conservation and management of endangered plants in the national parks of Korea. Iris dichotoma Pall. (Iridaceae), which is a popular garden plant, is considered a second-class endangered species by Korean government and it is listed as a EN (Endangered) species in Red Data Book of Korea. We analyzed ecological conditions of I. dichotoma habitats based on vegetation properties and soil characteristics. This species which is known to inhabit in grassland adjacent to the ocean of lowlands slope and its population was located at an elevation of 8 m to 11 m. In the study sites, the mean of soil organic matter, total nitrogen and soil pH were 6.16%, 0.234% and 5.39 respectively. Additionally, the genetic variation and structure of three populations were assessed using ISSR (Inter Simple Sequence Repeat) markers. The genetic diversity of I. dichotoma (P = 59.46%, H = 0.206, S = 0.310) at the species level was relatively high. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed 82.1% of the total genetic diversity was occurred in within populations and 17.9% variation among populations. Lastly, we developed predicted distribution model based on climate and topographic factors by applying SDMs (Species Distribution Models). Consequently, current status of I. dichotoma habitats is limited with natural factors such as the increase of the coverage rate of the herbs due to ecological succession. Therefore, it is essential to establish in situ and ex situ conservation strategies for protecting natural habitats and to require exploring potential and alternative habitats for reintroduction.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.161-188
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to analyze traffic volume between the Korean container ports located at the west coast and northern Chinese ports and then the distribution trend of container between Korea and China. The findings of the study are as follows. First, Container traffic between western Korean ports and northern Chinese ports has been increasing due to an increasing trade volume between both countries and geographical accessibility. Second, Seoul and neighboring area tend to use the trade route between the western ports and northern Chinese because of lower logistics costs and time-saved advantage compared to another ports. Third, the growth of the western ports did depend mainly on the northern China oriented growth. Such a fact could leads to the overlapping investment in port development in Korea and another intense competition among national ports to attract cargoes and liners. Therefore, port development policy considering the characteristics and function of national ports have to be established. and also alternatives and strategies for improving the competitive edge of small and medium sized shipping lines against the opening of shipping market have to be worked out.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.1-13
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• 2018

Mapping radiation heat flux of urban area is essential for urban design and landscape planning. Because controlling urban geometry and generating green space are important urban design strategies for reducing urban heat, urban planner and designer need to recognize the micro urban heat distribution for adequate urban planning. This study suggests a new methodology for mapping urban radiation heat flux in a micro scale considering buildings and trees' shade. For doing that, firstly, we calculate net radiation for each urban surfaces (building, road (not shaded, building shaded, tree shaded), ground (not shaded, building shaded, tree shaded), tree (not shaded, building shaded)). Then, by multiplying the area ratio of surfaces to the net radiation, we can obtain the radiation heat flux in micro-scale. The estimated net radiation results were found to be robust with a $R^2$ of 90%, which indicates a strong explanatory power of the model. The radiation heat flux map for 12h $17^{th}$ August explains that areas under the building and tree have lower net radiation heat flux, indicating that shading is a good strategy for reducing incident radiation. This method can be used for developing thermal friendly urban plan.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.64-77
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to examine the spatial distribution of highly educated human capital and to identify key factors affecting their spatial distribution. We analyzed the spatial concentration and inequality using Gini's coefficient and exploratory spatial data analysis and identified the economic and amenity factors to affect the spatial concentration of highly educated human capital using spatial regression model. The findings show that the spatial pattern of highly educated human capital is concentrated, imbalanced, and clustered in Capital region and part of Chungcheong and Gangwon region. The spatial concentration were more affected by economic factor than by amenity factors. This study provides some implication on the regional economic strategies to attract the human capital.

• Infection and chemotherapy
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.328-339
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• 2018

Background: Pneumococcal disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially in patients with comorbidities and advanced age. This study evaluated trends in epidemiology of adult pneumococcal disease in Crete, Greece, by identifying serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance of consecutive Streptococcus pneumoniae strains isolated from adults during an 8-year time period (2009-2016) and the indirect effect of the infant pneumococcal higher-valent conjugate vaccines 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13). Materials and Methods: Antimicrobial susceptibility was performed by E-test and serotyping by Quellung reaction. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was defined as non-susceptibility to penicillin (PNSP) combined with resistance to ${\geq}2$ non-${\beta}$-lactam antimicrobials. Results: A total of 135 S. pneumoniae strains were isolated from adults during the study period. Twenty-one serotypes were identified with 17F, 15A, 3, 19A, and 11A, being the most common. The coverage rates of PCV10, and PCV13 were 17.8% and 37.8%, respectively. PCV13 serotypes decreased significantly from 68.4% in 2009 to 8.3% in 2016 (P = 0.002). The most important emerging non-PCV13 serotypes were 17F, 15A, and 11A, with 15A being strongly associated with antimicrobial resistance and MDR. Among all study isolates, penicillin-resistant and MDR strains represented 7.4% and 14.1%, respectively. Predominant PNSP serotypes were 19A (21.7%), 11A (17.4%), and 15A (17.4%). Erythromycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and levofloxacin resistant rates were 30.4%, 15.6%, 16.3%, 16.3%, and 1.5%, respectively. Conclusion: Although pneumococcal disease continues to be a health burden in adults in Crete, our study reveals a herd protection effect of the infant pneumococcal higher-valent conjugate vaccination. Surveillance of changes in serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance among pneumococcal isolates are necessary to guide optimal prevention and treatment strategies.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.105-117
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• 2023

Climate change and invasive alien plant species (IAPs) are having a significant impact on mountain ecosystems. The combination of climate change and socio-economic development is exacerbating the invasion of IAPs, which are a major threat to biodiversity loss and ecosystem functioning. Species distribution modelling has become an important tool in predicting the invasion or suitability probability under climate change based on occurrence data and environmental variables. MaxEnt modelling was applied to predict the current suitable distribution of most noxious weed A. adenophora (Spreng) R. King and H. Robinson and analysed the changes in distribution with the use of current (year 2000) environmental variables and future (year 2050) climatic scenarios consisting of 3 representative concentration pathways (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) in Bhutan. Species occurrence data was collected from the region of interest along the road side using GPS handset. The model performance of both current and future climatic scenario was moderate in performance with mean temperature of wettest quarter being the most important variable that contributed in model fit. The study shows that current climatic condition favours the A. adenophora for its invasion and RCP 2.6 climatic scenario would promote aggression of invasion as compared to RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 climatic scenarios. This can lead to characterization of the species as preferring moderate change in climatic conditions to be invasive, while extreme conditions can inhibit its invasiveness. This study can serve as reference point for the conservation and management strategies in control of this species and further research.

• Proceedings of the National Institute of Ecology of the Republic of Korea
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.159-176
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• 2023

The conservation of the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) in South Korea requires the protection and preservation of natural habitats while additionally ensuring coexistence with human activities. Applying habitat map modeling techniques provides information regarding the distributional patterns of raccoon dogs and assists in the development of future conservation strategies. The purpose of this study is to generate potential habitat distribution maps for the raccoon dog in South Korea using geospatial technology-based models. These models include the frequency ratio (FR) as a bivariate statistical approach, the group method of data handling (GMDH) as a machine learning algorithm, and convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) as deep learning algorithms. Moreover, the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is used to fine-tune the hyperparameters of the machine learning and deep learning models. Moreover, there are 14 habitat characteristics used for developing the models: elevation, slope, valley depth, topographic wetness index, terrain roughness index, slope height, surface area, slope length and steepness factor (LS factor), normalized difference vegetation index, normalized difference water index, distance to drainage, distance to roads, drainage density, and morphometric features. The accuracy of prediction is evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. The results indicate comparable performances of all models. However, the CNN demonstrates superior capacity for prediction, achieving accuracies of 76.3% and 75.7% for the training and validation processes, respectively. The maps of potential habitat distribution are generated for five different levels of potentiality: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.37-45
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• 2015

Purpose - This paper's aim is to investigate whether or not gross profitability explains the cross-sectional variation of the stock returns in the Korean stock market. Gross profitability is an alternative profitability measure proposed by Novy-Marx in 2013 to predict cross-sectional variation of stock returns in the US. He shows that the gross profitability adds explanatory power to the Fama-French 3 factor model. Interestingly, gross profitability is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. By confirming the gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market, we may provide some implications regarding the well-known value premium. In addition, our empirical results may provide opportunities for the fund distribution industry to promote brand new styles of funds. Research design, data, and methodology - For our empirical analysis, we collect monthly market prices of all the companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) of the Korea Exchanges (KRX). Our sample period covers July1994 to December2014. The data from the company financial statementsare provided by the financial information company WISEfn. First, using Fama-Macbeth cross-sectional regression, we investigate the relation between gross profitability and stock return performance. For robustness in analyzing the performance of the gross profitability strategy, we consider value weighted portfolio returns as well as equally weighted portfolio returns. Next, using Fama-French 3 factor models, we examine whether or not the gross profitability strategy generates excess returns when firmsize and the book-to-market ratio are controlled. Finally, we analyze the effect of firm size and the book-to-market ratio on the gross profitability strategy. Results - First, through the Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regression, we show that gross profitability has almost the same explanatory power as the book-to-market ratio in explaining the cross-sectional variation of the Korean stock market. Second, we find evidence that gross profitability is a statistically significant variable for explaining cross-sectional stock returns when the size and the value effect are controlled. Third, we show that gross profitability, which is positively correlated with stock returns and firm size, is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. From the perspective of portfolio management, our results imply that since the gross profitability strategy is a distinctive growth strategy, value strategies can be improved by hedging with the gross profitability strategy. Conclusions - Our empirical results confirm the existence of a gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market. From the perspective of the fund distribution industry, the gross profitability portfolio is worthy of attention. Since the value strategy portfolio returns are negatively correlated with the gross profitability strategy portfolio returns, by mixing both portfolios, investors could be better off without additional risk. However, the profitable firms are dissimilar from the value firms (high book-to-market ratio firms); therefore, an alternative factor model including gross profitability may help us understand the economic implications of the well-known anomalies such as value premium, momentum, and low volatility. We reserve these topics for future research.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.1-18
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• 2011

Local assemblers of agricultural products perform important distribution functions such as providing sales outlets, labor forces, market information, and financing, forward contracting, farming, physical distribution, and etc. However, their business activities are not transparent and producers are not effectively protected from unfair practices done by local assemblers. In order to enhance transparency and to increase effectiveness of governmental policies, local assemblers, which are mostly private management, should be organized as corporations. In order to organize corporations, the government should emphasize the importance of education and should provide corporations with governmental funds for improvement of agricultural distribution. Corporations should be developed to marketing cooperatives in the long run, and are requested to form their federations. It is also necessary to have transparent forward contracting system by local assemblers. In order to have transparent system, producers and local assemblers are guided to use standard contract forms and to operate offices handling unfair trade practices by local assemblers. We also need a place to exchange forward contracts, which can be developed to a futures market in the long run. In summary, local assemblers of agricultural products, which are mostly private management, should be developed to corporations and be operated by a transparent manner in order to protect agricultural producers and increase efficiency of trading.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.106-129
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• 2001

In order to improve the agricultural products distribution, many devices have been suggested. Recently, direct marketing channel of agricultural product is one of the best solution for the problems of agricultural product distribution. The largest farmers cooperative association in Korea, Agricultural Cooperative(AC) have tried to promote direct marketing channel of agricultural product. Especially, the Agricultural product outlet store owned by Agricultural Cooperative(AC) is developed as an attractive alternative. Agricultural product outlet store owned by AC classify two types; small ＆ medium sized supermarket style and large discount store style. In this study, direct marketing through the agricultural product outlet store owned by AC was examined because it leads direct agricultural distribution and shares over 70% of direct agricultural distribution in Korea. Though a survey about consumer perception ＆ evaluation on establishing agricultural product outlet store owned by AC in Busan, the success factor of the store were identified. The results indicate that price, kindness of sales people, quality of products are main factor of the agricultural products outlet store. Theorefore Agricultural Cooperative should develop the retailing ＆ marketing strategies focusing these findings.