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Estimation of potential distribution of sweet potato weevil (Cylas formicarius) and climate change impact using MaxEnt (MaxEnt를 활용한 개미바구미(Cylas formicarius)의 잠재 분포와 기후변화 영향 모의)

  • Jinsol Hong;Heewon Hong;Sumin Pi;Soohyun Lee;Jae Ha Shin;Yongeun Kim;Kijong Cho
    • Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.505-518
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    • 2023
  • The key to invasive pest management lies in preemptive action. However, most current research using species distribution models is conducted after an invasion has occurred. This study modeled the potential distribution of the globally notorious sweet potato pest, the sweet potato weevil(Cylas formicarius), that has not yet invaded Korea using MaxEnt. Using global occurrence data, bioclimatic variables, and topsoil characteristics, MaxEnt showed high explanatory power as both the training and test areas under the curve exceeded 0.9. Among the environmental variables used in this study, minimum temperature in the coldest month (BIO06), precipitation in the driest month (BIO14), mean diurnal range (BIO02), and bulk density (BDOD) were identified as key variables. The predicted global distribution showed high values in most countries where the species is currently present, with a significant potential invasion risk in most South American countries where C. formicarius is not yet present. In Korea, Jeju Island and the southwestern coasts of Jeollanam-do showed very high probabilities. The impact of climate change under shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios indicated an expansion along coasts as climate change progresses. By applying the 10th percentile minimum training presence rule, the potential area of occurrence was estimated at 1,439 km2 under current climate conditions and could expand up to 9,485 km2 under the SSP585 scenario. However, the model predicted that an inland invasion would not be serious. The results of this study suggest a need to focus on the risk of invasion in islands and coastal areas.

Analysis of the 2022 Revised Science Curriculum Grades 3-4 Achievement Standards Based on Bloom's New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Comparison to the 2015 Revised Curriculum (Bloom의 신교육목표분류에 따른 2022 개정 과학과 교육과정 초등학교 3~4학년군 성취기준 분석 및 2015 개정 교육과정과의 비교)

  • Kim, Woo-Joong;Kim, Dong-Suk;Shin, Young-Joon;Kwon, Nan-Joo;Oh, Phil-Seok
    • Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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    • v.43 no.3
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    • pp.353-364
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    • 2024
  • The purpose of this study is to analyze the achievement standards for grades 3-4 of the 2022 revised science curriculum and identify the goals of science education for grades 3-4 of the 2022 revised curriculum, as well as provide implications for the development of the science textbooks for grades 3-4 and the direction of teaching for teachers in the field. For this purpose, 57 achievement standards of the Science Department 2022 revised curriculum for grades 3-4 were analyzed as to their knowledge dimensions and cognitive processes according to Bloom's Taxonomy of the New Educational Objectives. In cases where an achievement standard is a double sentence or combines two or more knowledge dimensions or cognitive process dimensions, we separated the sentences after having consulted with a group of experts and divided the achievement standards into 57 sentences. We then analyzed the frequency of the categorization of concepts and descriptors by comparing them with the previously studied elementary science standards from the 2015 revised curriculum. The main findings of the study are as follows. First, in the knowledge dimension, the "factual knowledge" accounted for 50 items (86%), compared to "conceptual knowledge" (10%), and "procedural knowledge" (4%), and "metacognitive knowledge" was not analyzed at all. Second, in terms of the cognitive processes, "Understanding" was the highest at 60% with 34 items. It was followed by "applying" with 11%, "creating" with 19%, "evaluating" with 15%, and "analyzing" and "remembering" with 6%. Third, when analyzing the descriptors, "I can explain" was the highest with 9%, followed by "comparison" with 6%, and "practice" and "classification" with 5%. Fourth, compared to the 2015 revised curriculum, "conceptual knowledge" was reduced and "factual knowledge" was overwhelmingly increased. Fifth, in the cognitive process dimension, "understanding,' has increased significantly, while the other cognitive process dimensions have decreased. Conclusions and implications based on these findings are as follows: the focus of the Science Department for grades 3-4 in the 2022 revised curriculum is heavily weighted toward the "factual knowledge," with "understanding" dominating the cognitive process dimensions. As a result, many concepts and applications have been reduced. Based on the results of the comparison of the descriptors with the results of the 2015 revised curriculum, the implications for the development of the science textbooks for grades 3-4 of the 2022 revised curriculum were discussed, and so were the implications of the curriculum for the field.

The Effect of the Gap between College Students' Perception of the Importance of Coffee Shops and Their Satisfaction after Patronizing Coffee Shops on Their Purchasing Behavior (대전원교학생대가배점중요성적감지화타문광고가배점지후적만의도지간적차거대타문구매행위적영향(大专院校学生对咖啡店重要性的感知和他们光顾咖啡店之后的满意度之间的差距对他们购买行为的影响))

  • Lee, Won-Ok
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2009
  • The purpose of this study was to categorize the gap between coffee shop 'importance' (as perceived by customers before patronizing the coffee shop) and 'satisfaction' (perception of customers after patronizing the coffee shop) as positive or negative and to analyze the effect of these gaps on purchasing behavior. To do this, I used the gap between importance and satisfaction regarding the choice of a coffee shop as the explanatory variable and performed an empirical analysis of the direction and size of the effect of the gap on purchasing behavior (overall satisfaction, willingness-to-revisit) by applying the Ordered Probit Model (OPM). A previous study that used IPA to evaluate the effects of gaps estimated the direction and size of a quadrant but failed to analyze the effect of gaps on customers. In this study, I evaluated the effects of positive and negative gaps on customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Using OPM, I quantified the effect of positive and negative gaps on overall customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Per-head expenditure, frequency of visits, and coffee-purchasing place had the most positive effects on overall customer satisfaction. Frequency of visits, followed by per-head expenditure and then coffee-purchasing place, had the most positive impact on willingness-to-visit. Thus per-head expenditure and frequency of visits had the greatest positive effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. This finding implies that the higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of customers who spend KRW5,000 or more once or more per week at coffee shops is, the higher their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit are. Despite the fact that economical efficiency had a significant effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit, college and university students still use coffee shops and are willing to spend KRW5,000 because they do not only purchase coffee as a product itself, but use the coffee shop for other activities, such as working, meeting friends, or relaxing. College and university students also access the Internet in coffee shops via personal laptops, watch movies, and study; thus, coffee shops should provide their customers with the appropriate facilities and services. The fact that a positive gap for coffee shop brand had a positive effect on willingness-to-revisit implies that the higher the level of customer satisfaction, the greater the willingness-to-revisit. A negative gap for this factor, on the other hand, implies that the lower the level of customer satisfaction, the lower the willingness-to-revisit. Thus, the brand factor has a comparatively greater effect on satisfaction than the other factors evaluated in this study. Given that the domestic coffee culture is becoming more upscale and college/university students are sensitive to this trend, students are attentive to brands. In most upscale coffee shops in Korea, the outer wall is built out of glass that can be opened, the interiors are exotic with an open kitchen. These upscale coffee shops function as landmarks and match the taste of college/university students. Coffee shops in Korea have become a cultural brand. To make customers feel that coffee shops are upscale, good quality establishments and measures to provide better services in terms of brand factor should be instituted. The intensified competition among coffee shop brands in Korea as a result of the booming industry indicates that provision of additional services is needed to differentiate competitors. These customers can also use a scanner free of charge. Another strategy that can be used to boost brands could be to provide and operate a seminar room for seminars and group study. If coffee shops adopt these types of strategies, college/university students would be more likely to consider the expenses they incur worthwhile and, subsequently, they would be more likely to be satisfied with the brands of these coffee shops, with an associated increase in their willingness-to-revisit. Gender and study year had the most negative effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Female students were more likely to be satisfied and be willing to return than male students, and third and fourth-year students were more likely to be satisfied and willing-to-return than first or second-year students. Students who drink coffee, read books, and use laptops alone at coffee shops are easily noticeable. High-grade students tend to visit coffee shops alone in order to use their time efficiently for self-development and to find jobs. The economical efficiency factor had the greatest effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit in terms of a positive gap. The higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of students with the price of the coffee, the greater their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Economical efficiency with a negative gap had a negative effect on willingness-to-revisit, which implies that a less negative gap will result in a greater willingness-to-revisit. Amid worsening market conditions, coffee shops located around colleges/universities are using strategies, such as a point or membership card, strategic alliances with credit-card companies, development of a set menu or seasonal menu, and free coffee-shot services to increase their competitive edge. Product power also had a negative effect in terms of a negative gap, which indicates that a higher negative gap will result in a lower willingness-to-revisit. Because there are many more customers that enjoy coffee in this decade, as compared to previous decades, the new generation of customers, namely college/university students, want various menu items in addition to coffee, and coffee shops should, therefore, add side menu items, such as waffles, rice cakes, cakes, sandwiches, and salads. For example, Starbucks Korea is making efforts to enhance product power by selling rice cakes flavored in strawberry, wormwood, and pumpkin, and providing coffee or cream free of charge. In summary, coffee shops should focus on increasing their economical efficiency, brand, and product power to enhance the satisfaction of college/university students. Because shops adjacent to colleges or universities enjoy a locational advantage, providing differentiated services in terms of economical efficiency, brand, and product power, is likely to increase customer satisfaction and return visits. Coffee shop brands should, therefore, be innovative and embrace change to meet their customers' desires. Because this study only targeted college/university students in Seoul, comparative studies targeting diverse regions and age groups are required to generalize the findings and recommendations of this study.

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Attitude Confidence and User Resistance for Purchasing Wearable Devices on Virtual Reality: Based on Virtual Reality Headgears (가상현실 웨어러블 기기의 구매 촉진을 위한 태도 자신감과 사용자 저항 태도: 가상현실 헤드기어를 중심으로)

  • Sohn, Bong-Jin;Park, Da-Sul;Choi, Jaewon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.165-183
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    • 2016
  • Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of technological devices and a rising number of various devices, resulting in an escalation of virtual reality technology. Technological market has rapidly been changed from smartphone to wearable devices based on virtual reality. Virtual reality can make users feel real situation through sensing interaction, voice, motion capture and so on. Facebook.com, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony and so on have investigated developing platform of virtual reality. the pricing of virtual reality devices also had decreased into 30% from their launched period. Thus market infrastructure in virtual reality have rapidly been developed to crease marketplace. However, most consumers recognize that virtual reality is not ease to purchase or use. That could not lead consumers to positive attitude for devices and purchase the related devices in the early market. Through previous studies related to virtual reality, there are few studies focusing on why the devices for virtual reality stayed in early stage in adoption & diffusion context in the market. Almost previous studies considered the reasons of hard adoption for innovative products in the viewpoints of Typology of Innovation Resistance, MIR(Management of Innovation Resistant), UTAUT & UTAUT2. However, product-based antecedents also important to increase user intention to purchase and use products in the technological market. In this study, we focus on user acceptance and resistance for increasing purchase and usage promotions of wearable devices related to virtual reality based on headgear products like Galaxy Gear. Especially, we added a variables like attitude confidence as a dimension for user resistance. The research questions of this study are follows. First, how attitude confidence and innovativeness resistance affect user intention to use? Second, What factors related to content and brand contexts can affect user intention to use? This research collected data from the participants who have experiences using virtual rality headgears aged between 20s to 50s located in South Korea. In order to collect data, this study used a pilot test and through making face-to-face interviews on three specialists, face validity and content validity were evaluated for the questionnaire validity. Cleansing the data, we dropped some outliers and data of irrelevant papers. Totally, 156 responses were used for testing the suggested hypotheses. Through collecting data, demographics and the relationships among variables were analyzed through conducting structural equation modeling by PLS. The data showed that the sex of respondents who have experience using social commerce sites (male=86(55.1%), female=70(44.9%). The ages of respondents are mostly from 20s (74.4%) to 30s (16.7%). 126 respondents (80.8%) have used virtual reality devices. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 1 and 7, which deals with the two relationships between brand awareness to attitude confidence, and quality of content to perceived enjoyment, all of our hypotheses were supported. In compliance with our hypotheses, perceived ease of use (H2) and use innovativeness (H3) were supported with its positively influence for the attitude confidence. This finding indicates that the more ease of use and innovativeness for devices increased, the more users' attitude confidence increased. Perceived price (H4), enjoyment (H5), Quantity of contents (H6) significantly increase user resistance. However, perceived price positively affect user innovativeness resistance meanwhile perceived enjoyment and quantity of contents negatively affect user innovativeness resistance. In addition, aesthetic exterior (H6) was also positively associated with perceived price (p<0.01). Also projection quality (H8) can increase perceived enjoyment (p<0.05). Finally, attitude confidence (H10) increased user intention to use virtual reality devices. however user resistance (H11) negatively affect user intention to use virtual reality devices. The findings of this study show that attitude confidence and user innovativeness resistance differently influence customer intention for using virtual reality devices. There are two distinct characteristic of attitude confidence: perceived ease of use and user innovativeness. This study identified the antecedents of different roles of perceived price (aesthetic exterior) and perceived enjoyment (quality of contents & projection quality). The findings indicated that brand awareness and quality of contents for virtual reality is not formed within virtual reality market yet. Therefore, firms should developed brand awareness for their product in the virtual market to increase market share.

Clickstream Big Data Mining for Demographics based Digital Marketing (인구통계특성 기반 디지털 마케팅을 위한 클릭스트림 빅데이터 마이닝)

  • Park, Jiae;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.143-163
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    • 2016
  • The demographics of Internet users are the most basic and important sources for target marketing or personalized advertisements on the digital marketing channels which include email, mobile, and social media. However, it gradually has become difficult to collect the demographics of Internet users because their activities are anonymous in many cases. Although the marketing department is able to get the demographics using online or offline surveys, these approaches are very expensive, long processes, and likely to include false statements. Clickstream data is the recording an Internet user leaves behind while visiting websites. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage, the activity is logged in semi-structured website log files. Such data allows us to see what pages users visited, how long they stayed there, how often they visited, when they usually visited, which site they prefer, what keywords they used to find the site, whether they purchased any, and so forth. For such a reason, some researchers tried to guess the demographics of Internet users by using their clickstream data. They derived various independent variables likely to be correlated to the demographics. The variables include search keyword, frequency and intensity for time, day and month, variety of websites visited, text information for web pages visited, etc. The demographic attributes to predict are also diverse according to the paper, and cover gender, age, job, location, income, education, marital status, presence of children. A variety of data mining methods, such as LSA, SVM, decision tree, neural network, logistic regression, and k-nearest neighbors, were used for prediction model building. However, this research has not yet identified which data mining method is appropriate to predict each demographic variable. Moreover, it is required to review independent variables studied so far and combine them as needed, and evaluate them for building the best prediction model. The objective of this study is to choose clickstream attributes mostly likely to be correlated to the demographics from the results of previous research, and then to identify which data mining method is fitting to predict each demographic attribute. Among the demographic attributes, this paper focus on predicting gender, age, marital status, residence, and job. And from the results of previous research, 64 clickstream attributes are applied to predict the demographic attributes. The overall process of predictive model building is compose of 4 steps. In the first step, we create user profiles which include 64 clickstream attributes and 5 demographic attributes. The second step performs the dimension reduction of clickstream variables to solve the curse of dimensionality and overfitting problem. We utilize three approaches which are based on decision tree, PCA, and cluster analysis. We build alternative predictive models for each demographic variable in the third step. SVM, neural network, and logistic regression are used for modeling. The last step evaluates the alternative models in view of model accuracy and selects the best model. For the experiments, we used clickstream data which represents 5 demographics and 16,962,705 online activities for 5,000 Internet users. IBM SPSS Modeler 17.0 was used for our prediction process, and the 5-fold cross validation was conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. As the experimental results, we can verify that there are a specific data mining method well-suited for each demographic variable. For example, age prediction is best performed when using the decision tree based dimension reduction and neural network whereas the prediction of gender and marital status is the most accurate by applying SVM without dimension reduction. We conclude that the online behaviors of the Internet users, captured from the clickstream data analysis, could be well used to predict their demographics, thereby being utilized to the digital marketing.

Methodology for Identifying Issues of User Reviews from the Perspective of Evaluation Criteria: Focus on a Hotel Information Site (사용자 리뷰의 평가기준 별 이슈 식별 방법론: 호텔 리뷰 사이트를 중심으로)

  • Byun, Sungho;Lee, Donghoon;Kim, Namgyu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.23-43
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    • 2016
  • As a result of the growth of Internet data and the rapid development of Internet technology, "big data" analysis has gained prominence as a major approach for evaluating and mining enormous data for various purposes. Especially, in recent years, people tend to share their experiences related to their leisure activities while also reviewing others' inputs concerning their activities. Therefore, by referring to others' leisure activity-related experiences, they are able to gather information that might guarantee them better leisure activities in the future. This phenomenon has appeared throughout many aspects of leisure activities such as movies, traveling, accommodation, and dining. Apart from blogs and social networking sites, many other websites provide a wealth of information related to leisure activities. Most of these websites provide information of each product in various formats depending on different purposes and perspectives. Generally, most of the websites provide the average ratings and detailed reviews of users who actually used products/services, and these ratings and reviews can actually support the decision of potential customers in purchasing the same products/services. However, the existing websites offering information on leisure activities only provide the rating and review based on one stage of a set of evaluation criteria. Therefore, to identify the main issue for each evaluation criterion as well as the characteristics of specific elements comprising each criterion, users have to read a large number of reviews. In particular, as most of the users search for the characteristics of the detailed elements for one or more specific evaluation criteria based on their priorities, they must spend a great deal of time and effort to obtain the desired information by reading more reviews and understanding the contents of such reviews. Although some websites break down the evaluation criteria and direct the user to input their reviews according to different levels of criteria, there exist excessive amounts of input sections that make the whole process inconvenient for the users. Further, problems may arise if a user does not follow the instructions for the input sections or fill in the wrong input sections. Finally, treating the evaluation criteria breakdown as a realistic alternative is difficult, because identifying all the detailed criteria for each evaluation criterion is a challenging task. For example, if a review about a certain hotel has been written, people tend to only write one-stage reviews for various components such as accessibility, rooms, services, or food. These might be the reviews for most frequently asked questions, such as distance between the nearest subway station or condition of the bathroom, but they still lack detailed information for these questions. In addition, in case a breakdown of the evaluation criteria was provided along with various input sections, the user might only fill in the evaluation criterion for accessibility or fill in the wrong information such as information regarding rooms in the evaluation criteria for accessibility. Thus, the reliability of the segmented review will be greatly reduced. In this study, we propose an approach to overcome the limitations of the existing leisure activity information websites, namely, (1) the reliability of reviews for each evaluation criteria and (2) the difficulty of identifying the detailed contents that make up the evaluation criteria. In our proposed methodology, we first identify the review content and construct the lexicon for each evaluation criterion by using the terms that are frequently used for each criterion. Next, the sentences in the review documents containing the terms in the constructed lexicon are decomposed into review units, which are then reconstructed by using the evaluation criteria. Finally, the issues of the constructed review units by evaluation criteria are derived and the summary results are provided. Apart from the derived issues, the review units are also provided. Therefore, this approach aims to help users save on time and effort, because they will only be reading the relevant information they need for each evaluation criterion rather than go through the entire text of review. Our proposed methodology is based on the topic modeling, which is being actively used in text analysis. The review is decomposed into sentence units rather than considering the whole review as a document unit. After being decomposed into individual review units, the review units are reorganized according to each evaluation criterion and then used in the subsequent analysis. This work largely differs from the existing topic modeling-based studies. In this paper, we collected 423 reviews from hotel information websites and decomposed these reviews into 4,860 review units. We then reorganized the review units according to six different evaluation criteria. By applying these review units in our methodology, the analysis results can be introduced, and the utility of proposed methodology can be demonstrated.

The Pattern Analysis of Financial Distress for Non-audited Firms using Data Mining (데이터마이닝 기법을 활용한 비외감기업의 부실화 유형 분석)

  • Lee, Su Hyun;Park, Jung Min;Lee, Hyoung Yong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.111-131
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    • 2015
  • There are only a handful number of research conducted on pattern analysis of corporate distress as compared with research for bankruptcy prediction. The few that exists mainly focus on audited firms because financial data collection is easier for these firms. But in reality, corporate financial distress is a far more common and critical phenomenon for non-audited firms which are mainly comprised of small and medium sized firms. The purpose of this paper is to classify non-audited firms under distress according to their financial ratio using data mining; Self-Organizing Map (SOM). SOM is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a lower dimensional discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. SOM is different from other artificial neural networks as it applies competitive learning as opposed to error-correction learning such as backpropagation with gradient descent, and in the sense that it uses a neighborhood function to preserve the topological properties of the input space. It is one of the popular and successful clustering algorithm. In this study, we classify types of financial distress firms, specially, non-audited firms. In the empirical test, we collect 10 financial ratios of 100 non-audited firms under distress in 2004 for the previous two years (2002 and 2003). Using these financial ratios and the SOM algorithm, five distinct patterns were distinguished. In pattern 1, financial distress was very serious in almost all financial ratios. 12% of the firms are included in these patterns. In pattern 2, financial distress was weak in almost financial ratios. 14% of the firms are included in pattern 2. In pattern 3, growth ratio was the worst among all patterns. It is speculated that the firms of this pattern may be under distress due to severe competition in their industries. Approximately 30% of the firms fell into this group. In pattern 4, the growth ratio was higher than any other pattern but the cash ratio and profitability ratio were not at the level of the growth ratio. It is concluded that the firms of this pattern were under distress in pursuit of expanding their business. About 25% of the firms were in this pattern. Last, pattern 5 encompassed very solvent firms. Perhaps firms of this pattern were distressed due to a bad short-term strategic decision or due to problems with the enterpriser of the firms. Approximately 18% of the firms were under this pattern. This study has the academic and empirical contribution. In the perspectives of the academic contribution, non-audited companies that tend to be easily bankrupt and have the unstructured or easily manipulated financial data are classified by the data mining technology (Self-Organizing Map) rather than big sized audited firms that have the well prepared and reliable financial data. In the perspectives of the empirical one, even though the financial data of the non-audited firms are conducted to analyze, it is useful for find out the first order symptom of financial distress, which makes us to forecast the prediction of bankruptcy of the firms and to manage the early warning and alert signal. These are the academic and empirical contribution of this study. The limitation of this research is to analyze only 100 corporates due to the difficulty of collecting the financial data of the non-audited firms, which make us to be hard to proceed to the analysis by the category or size difference. Also, non-financial qualitative data is crucial for the analysis of bankruptcy. Thus, the non-financial qualitative factor is taken into account for the next study. This study sheds some light on the non-audited small and medium sized firms' distress prediction in the future.

Oestrogenic Activity of Parabens In Vitro Estrogen Assays (에틸, 프로필, 이소프로필, 부틸, 이소부틸 파라벤의 In Vitro 검색시험 연구에서의 내분비독성)

  • Lee Sung-Hoon;Kim Sun-Jung;Park Jung-Ran;Jo Eun-Hye;Ahn Nam-Shik;Park Joon-Suk;Hwang Jae-Woong;Jung Ji-Youn;Lee Yong-Soon;Kang Kyung-Sun
    • Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.100-106
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    • 2006
  • The use of underarm and body care cosmetics with oestrogenic chemical excipients (particularly the parabens) and the hypothesized association with breast cancer incidence, particularly in women. It is noted that the type of cosmetic product is irrelevant (e.g. antiperspirant/deodorant versus body lotion, moisturizers or sprays versus creams) and attention must focus on issues of actual exposure to chemicals through continued dermal application of body care products and the endocrine/hormonal activity and toxicity of the chemicals in the formulations. To evaluate the estrogenic activities of parabens such as ethylparaben, butylparaben, propylparaben, isobutylparaben and isopropylparaben, we used recombinant yeasts containing the human estrogen receptor [Saccharomyces cerevisiae ER+LYS 8127], human breast cancer MCF-7 cell lines and human estrogen receptor ${\alpha}\;and\;{\beta}$. In E-screen assays, isopropylparaben is the most estrogenic paraben, and in ER competition assay, isobutylparaben is the most estrogenic paraben. We evaluated isopropylparaben was most active in the recombinant yeast assay, followed by propylparaben, ethylparaben, isobutylparaben and butylparaben. Results from this study demonstrate that parabens are observed in human endocrine system. Therefore, we have shown that the parabens is induced the estrogenic activities similar to $17{\beta}$-estradiol and Bisphenol-A.

A Study on the Born Global Venture Corporation's Characteristics and Performance ('본글로벌(born global)전략'을 추구하는 벤처기업의 특성과 성과에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hyung-Jun;Jung, Duk-Hwa
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.39-59
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    • 2007
  • The international involvement of a firm has been described as a gradual development process "a process in which the enterprise gradually increases its international involvement in many studies. This process evolves in the interplay between the development of knowledge about foreign markets and operations on one hand and increasing commitment of resources to foreign markets on the other." On the basis of Uppsala internationalization model, many studies strengthen strong theoretical and empirical support. According to the predictions of the classic stages theory, the internationalization process of firms have been recognized and characterized gradual evolution to foreign markets, so called stage theory: indirect & direct export, strategic alliance and foreign direct investment. However, termed "international new ventures" (McDougall, Shane, and Oviatt 1994), "born globals" (Knight 1997; Knight and Cavusgil 1996; Madsen and Servais 1997), "instant internationals" (Preece, Miles, and Baetz 1999), or "global startups" (Oviatt and McDougall 1994) have been used and come into spotlight in internationalization study of technology intensity venture companies. Recent researches focused on venture company have suggested the phenomenons of 'born global' firms as a contradiction to the stages theory. Especially the article by Oviatt and McDougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs, on international new ventures, and on their importance in the globalising world economy. Since venture companies have, by definition. lack of economies of scale, lack of resources (financial and knowledge), and aversion to risk taking, they have a difficulty in expanding their market to abroad and pursue internalization gradually and step by step. However many venture companies have pursued 'Born Global Strategy', which is different from process strategy, because corporate's environment has been rapidly changing to globalization. The existing studies investigate that (1) why the ventures enter into overseas market in those early stage, even in infancy, (2) what make the different international strategy among ventures and the born global strategy is better to the infant ventures. However, as for venture's performance(growth and profitability), the existing results do not correspond each other. They also, don't include marketing strategy (differentiation, low price, market breadth and market pioneer) that is important factors in studying of BGV's performance. In this paper I aim to delineate the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenons of venture companies' internationalization strategy. In order to verify research problems, I develop a resource-based model and marketing strategies for analyzing the effects of the born global venture firms. In this paper, I suggested 3 research problems. First, do the korean venture companies take some advantages in the aspects of corporate's performances (growth, profitability and overall market performances) when they pursue internationalization from inception? Second, do the korean BGV have firm specific assets (foreign experiences, foreign orientation, organizational absorptive capacity)? Third, What are the marketing strategies of korean BGV and is it different from others? Under these problems, I test then (1) whether the BGV that a firm started its internationalization activity almost from inception, has more intangible resources(foreign experience of corporate members, foreign orientation, technological competences and absorptive capacity) than any other venture firms(Non_BGV) and (2) also whether the BGV's marketing strategies-differentiation, low price, market diversification and preemption strategy are different from Non_BGV. Above all, the main purpose of this research is that results achieved by BGV are indeed better than those obtained by Non_BGV firms with respect to firm's growth rate and efficiency. To do this research, I surveyed venture companies located in Seoul and Deajeon in Korea during November to December, 2005. I gather the data from 200 venture companies and then selected 84 samples, which have been founded during 1999${\sim}$2000. To compare BGV's characteristics with those of Non_BGV, I also had to classify BGV by export intensity over 50% among five or six aged venture firms. Many other researches tried to classify BGV and Non_BGV, but there were various criterion as many as researchers studied on this topic. Some of them use time gap, which is time difference of establishment and it's first internationalization experience and others use export intensity, ration of export sales amount divided by total sales amount. Although using a mixed criterion of prior research in my case, I do think this kinds of criterion is subjective and arbitrary rather than objective, so I do mention my research has some critical limitation in the classification of BGV and Non_BGV. The first purpose of research is the test of difference of performance between BGV and Non_BGV. As a result of t-test, the research show that there are statistically efficient difference not only in the growth rate (sales growth rate compared to competitors and 3 years averaged sales growth rate) but also in general market performance of BGV. But in case of profitability performance, the hypothesis that is BGV is more profit (return on investment(ROI) compared to competitors and 3 years averaged ROI) than Non-BGV was not supported. From these results, this paper concludes that BGV grows rapidly and gets a high market performance (in aspect of market share and customer loyalty) but there is no profitability difference between BGV and Non_BGV. The second result is that BGV have more absorptive capacity especially, knowledge competence, and entrepreneur's international experience than Non_BGV. And this paper also found BGV search for product differentiation, exemption strategy and market diversification strategy while Non_BGV search for low price strategy. These results have never been dealt with other existing studies. This research has some limitations. First limitation is concerned about the definition of BGV, as I mentioned above. Conceptually speaking, BGV is defined as company pursue internationalization from inception, but in empirical study, it's very difficult to classify between BGV and Non_BGV. I tried to classify on the basis of time difference and export intensity, this criterions are so subjective and arbitrary that the results are not robust if the criterion were changed. Second limitation is concerned about sample used in this research. I surveyed venture companies just located in Seoul and Daejeon and also use only 84 samples which more or less provoke sample bias problem and generalization of results. I think the more following studies that focus on ventures located in other region, the better to verify the results of this paper.

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Domestic Legislative Problems on the Civil Liability of Air Carrier in Korea Focus on the Example of Every Countries' Legislation (한국(韓國)에 있어서 항공안전인(航空運送人)의 민사책임(民事責任)에 관한 국내입법(國內立法)의 제문제(諸問題) ${\sim}$각국(各國)의 입법례(立法例)를 중심(中心)으로 하여${\sim}$)

  • Kim, Doo-Hwan
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.9-53
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    • 2004
  • This paper described the contents of theme entitled "Domestic Legislative Problems on the Civil Liability of Air Carrier in Korea" including the current example of fourteen countries' legislation ((1) Great Britain, (2) United States of America, (3) Canada, (4)European Union), (5) Germany, (6) France, (7) Italy, (8) Spain, (9) Swiss, (10) Australia, (11) Japan, (12) People's Republic of China, (13) Taiwan, (14) North Korea) relating to the aviation law or air transport law. Though the Korean and Japanese aviation act has provided only the public items such as (1) registration of aircraft, (2) persons engaged in aviation, (3) operation of aircraft, (4) aviation facilities including airport, (5) air transport business, (6) investigate of aircraft accidents etc., but they could not regulated the private items such as the legal relations of the air transport contract (1) air passenger ticket, (2) air luggage ticket, (3) airway bill, (4) liability of air carrier, (5) amount of compensation for damage caused by aircraft accidents, (6)jurisdiction, (7) arbitration, (8) limitation of action, (9) combined carriage, (10) carriage by air performed by an actual carrier other than contracting carrier, damage caused by aircraft to the third parties etc. in their aviation act until now. In order to solve speedily the legal problems on the limitation of air carrier's liability and long law suit and disputes between wrongdoers and survivors etc, it is necessary and desirable for us to enact a new "Draft for the Air Transport Act" including the abovementioned private items. I would like to propose personally and strongly the legislation of "Draft for the Air Transport Act" in Korea in emphasizing the importance of ensuring protection of the interests of consumers air passengers and shippers in carriage by air and the need for equitable compensation between air carriers and survivors caused by the aircraft accidents such as the German Air Transport Act (Luftverkerhrsgesetz).

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