• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.172-178
• /
• 2012

Data from clinical studies are needed for psychiatrists to make quick and scientific decisions based on the best available evidence in clinical settings. Various methods of clinical studies are useful for clinicians to have reliable answers to unmet clinical needs. Although randomized controlled trials may provide high-quality information about major issues, well-designed, naturalistic and observational studies often give us unbiased explanation for real-world phenomena. Adequate selection of clinical variables and appropriate number of participants are key factors of well-designed clinical studies. Statistical methods can add an extra dimension to initial design of clinical studies. Given ethical issues in clinical studies on psychiatric disorders, special regards should be paid to participants' ability to provide informed consents. New strategies of clinical studies need to be developed to meet clinical needs and protect the rights and welfare of study participants.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.11
• /
• pp.977-986
• /
• 2020

This paper investigates factors impacting on sustainable fashion buying intention of consumers by reviewing studies about the topic and conducting a survey with consumers in Ho Chi Minh City. In detail, firstly, an interview with 15 respondents was conducted to check the understanding of concepts and questions and, secondly, the study used the convenient sampling method, with 172 samples collected and analyzed, of which young respondents accounted for the majority of the sample. The respondents tend to go shopping many times in a year, with the number of people buying fashion products from every week to every two months accounting for 65.2% totally. The findings suggest that the firms should prioritize strategies that can improve customer attitude toward sustainable fashion, making them feel good, pleasant, satisfied and favorable when engaging in sustainable fashion consumption. This study concludes that consumers need more information to enable them to make better ethical decisions. This study proposes that the major channels that consumers use to seek sustainable product information include public education, peer influence, and corporate marketing information about the products. This study concludes that public education and corporate marketing information on green consumption education is effective for improving consumer sustainable buying intention.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.37-43
• /
• 2021

The main objective of this study is to discuss the effect of free cash flow as a moderating variable on managers' decisions as regard earnings management. Companies with free cash flow are expected to refrain from taking opportunistic actions such as earnings management. The research used quantitative methods with sub-group moderating analysis. It is found that there is a significant relationship between past performance and earnings management, where the free cash flow is the moderating variable. The effect of past performance on earnings management is shown to slightly increase as free cash flow is considered. The findings of this study prove that earnings management is a practice that is often done by utilizing the flexibility of accounting recording and recognition mechanisms. Past performance becomes the main variable in encouraging managers to manage earnings by reducing revenue in the current period. This research can also be a reference in explaining managerial behavior and can be a reference to improving ethical human resource capabilities. This research focuses on companies in Indonesia that conduct earnings management by lowering profits as a result of declining past performance and examines aspects of free cash flow that reinforces the conduct of earnings management.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.95-100
• /
• 2023

With the implementation of Act on Hospice and Palliative Care and Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment for Patients at the End of Life, interests of the general public on self-determination right and dignified death of patients have increased markedly in Korea. However, "self-determination" on medical care is misunderstood as decision not to sustain life, and "dignified death" as terminating life before suffering from disease in terminal stage. This belief leads that physician-assisted suicide should be accommodated is being proliferated widely in the society even without accepting euthanasia. Artificially terminating the life of a human is an unethical act even though there is any rational or motivation by the person requesting euthanasia, and there is agreement thereof has been reached while there are overseas countries that allow euthanasia. Given the fact that the essence of medical care is to enable the human to live their lives in greater comfort by enhancing their health throughout their lives, physician-assisted suicide should be deemed as one of the means of euthanasia, not as a means of dignified death. Accordingly, institutional organization and improvement of the quality of hospice palliative care to assist the patients suffering from terminal stage or intractable diseases in putting their lives in order and to more comfortably accept the end of life physically, mentally, socially, psychologically and spiritually need to be implemented first to ensure their dignified death.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.400-409
• /
• 2023

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant progress in recent years, and many medical fields are attempting to introduce AI technology into clinical practice. Currently, much research is being conducted to evaluate that AI can be incorporated into surgical procedures to make them safer and more efficient, subsequently to obtain better outcomes for patients. In this paper, we review basic AI research regarding surgery and discuss the potential for implementing AI technology in gastric cancer surgery. At present, research and development is focused on AI technologies that assist the surgeon's understandings and judgment during surgery, such as anatomical navigation. AI systems are also being developed to recognize in which the surgical phase is ongoing. Such a surgical phase recognition systems is considered for effective storage of surgical videos and education, in the future, for use in systems to objectively evaluate the skill of surgeons. At this time, it is not considered practical to let AI make intraoperative decisions or move forceps automatically from an ethical standpoint, too. At present, AI research on surgery has various limitations, and it is desirable to develop practical systems that will truly benefit clinical practice in the future.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.37-50
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study was to analyze the core content of consumer area from 1st to 2009 revised middle school Home Economics textbooks with the aim of proposing guidelines. An in-depth content analysis was conducted twenty two Home Economics textbooks that have been used in middle schools, beginning with the first curriculum until the revised 2009 curriculum with word cloud. The major findings of this study were as follows; First, the first period of the textbooks emphasized thrift-related concepts such as budgeting and saving money. The second and third period in Home Economics textbooks focused on household work and resource management. From fifth period, the content of textbooks were emphasized learning how to find relevant information and making rational decisions as a consumer. The 2007 revised and 2009 revised period in Home Economics have focused on rational decision-making by adolescents, while taking into account environmental considerations. The content of textbooks now introduces students to the notions of ethical consumerism and eco-friendly consumption across domains such as clothing, food, and housing. The curriculum and content of textbooks in Home Economics should emphasize the concepts related to ethical consumption.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.1-43
• /
• 2012

This paper examines the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU)'s recent legal challenge on patents held by Myriad Genetics on two genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) associated with a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Instead of analyzing the ACLU's objections to the BRCA patents in terms of its legal technicalities and normative ethical principles, this paper seeks to situate this legal case in the broader historical context of the shifting understanding of the relationship between private ownership, economic development, and the public interest in academic sciences. This paper first briefly chronicles a series of scientific developments and key legal decisions involving patenting of life forms, including genetically engineered micro-organisms animals and biological materials of human origins like cell cultures and genes, that led to the US Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO)'s official guidelines on human gene patenting in 2001. At another level, this paper analyzes the expansion of the scope of intellectual property rights in the life sciences in terms of shifting economic and legal assumptions about public knowledge and its role for economic development in the 1970s. I then show how these economic, legal, and ethical ideas that linked private ownership and the public interest have been challenged from the 1990s, calling for revisions in intellectual property laws regarding a wide array of life forms. The tragedy of the anticommons in human gene patenting, according to ACLU, has severely undermined creative scientific activities, medical innovations, access to health care and rights to life among cancer patient groups. ACLU's objection to human gene patenting on several US-constitutional grounds in turn suggests issues regarding intellectual property are critically linked to vital issues pertinent to the creative communities in arts and sciences, such as free exchange of ideas, censorship and monopoly, and free expression and piracy etc.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.67-96
• /
• 2015

Do cultural differences affect moral decisions? Two studies were conducted to investigate whether attitudes of individualism vs. collectivism have an impact on ethical decision making. Study 1 (N=92) showed that utilitarianism was preferred in a situation, in which an intervention resulted in the best outcome (i.e., saving more people's lives), while deontology was preferred in a situation, in which the focus was on negative consequences of the intervention (i.e. personal sacrifices). Additionally, there were differences between the idiocentrics and the allocentrics groups regarding morality aspects. In the idiocentrics group, harm and fairness were regarded as more important than other moral aspects, while in the allocentrics group, not only harm and fairness, but also ingroup and authority were perceived as critical moral aspects. In Study 2 (N=30), after lexical decision tasks were conducted for culture priming, the mouse tracking method was used to explore response dynamics of moral decision processes, while judging appropriateness of interventions in moral dilemmas. In Study 2, in a condition, in which the small number of victims were focused upon, there were more maximal deviations and higher X_flips in the individualism priming group than in the collectivism priming group, which showed that the participants in the individualism condition had more deliberative processes before choosing their answers between utilitarianism and deontology. In addition, the participants in the individualism priming condition showed more maximal deviations in the mouse trajectories regarding ingroup related interventions in moral dilemmas than those in the collectivism priming condition. These results implicated the possibilities that the automatic emotional process and the controlled deliberative process in moral decision making might interact with cultural dispositions of the individuals and the focus of situations.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.13-24
• /
• 2007

Objectives : This article aims to give guidance on the conduct and reporting of case series and audits of acupuncture, based on common problems that have arisen in the past. This type of project, and particularly the prospective case series or pre- post-intervention study, may give valuable evidence of the overall effectiveness of acupuncture-for example in different situations and in different conditions- and provides one step in the research pathway before generating an hypothesis. Results & Discussion : The project should be designed with the aim of reducing bias as much as possible. Careful and detailed planning is essential for the project to produce worthwhile results that readers can evaluate and replicate. Ethical issues should be considered and formal approval may be necessary. The patient group should be recruited systematically and baseline data obtained. The treatment given should be systematic and decisions to change or end treatment made explicit. The outcome should be measured in ways that are known to be reliable and valid. Musculoskeletal problems can be evaluated with scales for pain and confirmed by measuring one other symptom such as stiffness or one other aspect such as bothersomeness. Global change scores also provide supporting information, and the MYMOP (Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile) measure is popular when patients with different conditions are included. The design of questionnaires for beliefs and attitudes is a specialised area that should not be attempted without expert help. Adverse events should also be recorded. Analysis of the data and the best way of summarising and presenting the results are also discussed.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.89-93
• /
• 2008

"Personalized medicine," the goal of which is to provide better clinical care by applying patient's own genomic information to their health care is a global challenge for the $21^{st}$ century "genomic era." This is especially true in Korea, where provisions for clinical genetic services are inadequate for the existing demand, let alone future demands. Genomics-based knowledge and tools make it possible to approach each patient as a unique biological individual, which has led to a paradigm-shift in medical practice, giving it more of a predictive focus as compared with current treatment oriented approach. With recent advancements in genomics, many genetic tests, such as susceptibility genetic tests, have been developed for both rare single gene diseases and more common multifactorial diseases. Indeed, genetic tests for presymtomatic individuals and genetic tests for drug response have become widely available, and personalized medicine will face the challenge of assisting patients who use such tests to make appropriate and wise use of genetic risk assessment. A major challenge of genomic medicine lies in understanding and communicating disease risk in order to facilitate and support patients and their families in making informed decisions. Establishment of a health care system with provisions for genetic counseling as an integral part of health care service, in addition to genomic literacy of health care providers, is vital to meet this growing challenge. Realization of the promise of personalized medicine in the era of genomics for improvement of health care is dependent on further development of next generation sequencing technology and affordable sequencing test costs. Also necessary will be policy development concerning the ethical, legal and social issues of genomic medicine and an educated and ready medical community with clinical practice guidelines for genetic counseling and genetic testing.