• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.671-675
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• 2012

This study was conducted to establish the BMPs (Best Management Practices) for preventing pollutant loadings from paddy rice field applied livestock liquid manure from 2008 through 2011. Cultivated paddy rice fields (Gyeonggi province, Korea) were treated with SCB (Slurry composting and bio-filtration process) liquid fertilizer. The BMPs for paddy rice field developed in this study includes: 1) the controlling a drainage water gate in paddy rice field from right after SCB liquid fertilizer application to 3 weeks after rice transplanting; 2) livestock liquid fertilizer application to paddy rice soils in 20 days before rice transplanting to encourage the utilization of liquid fertilizer; 3) preservation of surface water depth to 5 cm in a paddy field right after SCB liquid fertilizer applied to minimize a water pollution and enhance the utilization of liquid fertilizer; and 4) blocking a water gate at least for 2 days to inactivate E. coli survival. The findings of this study will provide useful and practical guideline to applicators of agricultural soil in deciding appropriate handling and time frames for preventing pollution of water quality for sustainable agriculture.

• 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 Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.240-253
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• 1997

The main problems contributing to food poisoning outbreaks in institutional settings and a home were reviewed and analyzed through the epidemiological investigations of food poisoning. The major documented factors included improper holding temperatures, inadequate cooking, poor personal hygiene, cross-contamination and contaminated equipment, food from unsafe sources, failure to follow food hygiene policies, and lack of education, training, monitoring and superivision. Usually more than one factor contributed to the development of an outbreak. (1) Use of improper holding temperatures was the single most important factor contributing to food poisoning. They included improper cooling, allowing a laps of time (12 hours or more) between preparing food and eating it, improper hot holding, and inadequate or improper thawing. Food thermometers were not used in most of the instances. (2) In inadequate cooking, the core temperature of food during and after cooking had not been measured, and routine monitoring was limited to recording the temperature of plated meals. Compared with conventional methods of cooking, microwave ovens did not protect against food poisoning as effectively. Centralized food preparation potentially increased the risk of food poisoning outbreaks. (3) Poor personal hygiene both at the individual level (improper handwashing and lack of proper hygienic practices) and at the institutional level (poor general sanitization) increased the risk of transmission. Person to person transmission of enteric pathogens through direct contact and via fomites has been noted in several instances. (4) Obtaining food from unsafe sources was a risk factor in outbreaks of food poisoning. Food risks were high when food was grown or harvested from contaminated areas. Possibilities included contamination in the field, in transport, at the retail site, or at the time it was prepared for serving. (5) Cross-contamination and inadequate cleaning/handling of equipment became potential vehicles of food poisoning. Failure to separate cooked food from raw food was also a risk factor. (6) Failure to follow food hygiene policies also provided opportunities for outbreaks of food poisoning. It included improper hygienic practices during food preparation, neglect of personnel policies (involvement of symptomatic workers in food preparation), poor results on routine inspections, and disregarding the results and recommendations of an inspection. (7) Lack of formal and in-service education, training, monitoring, and supervision of food handlers or supervisors were critical and perhaps neglected elements in occurrences of food poisoning.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.603-616
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• 2010

Based on recent dramatic increases in foodborne outbreaks in restaurants, self-managed sanitation systems are now recommended to control contributing risk factors. This study aimed to improve sanitation management practices in restaurants and had two objectives. First, we tried to develop a self-managed sanitation check-list, including risk factors contributing to foodborne illness and Korean food hygiene regulation articles. We also tried to evaluate current sanitation management practices in restaurants according to operation and restaurant type. Thirty restaurants were evaluated by on-the-spot inspectors using an auditing tool consisting of four dimensions, seventeen categories, and forty-one items. Total compliance rate categorized by operation type significantly differed between chain restaurants and self-managed restaurants, with values of 85.5% and 51.6%, respectively. Therefore, self-managed restaurants, which showed the lowest compliance rate of below 30.0%, need more strict control to improve current unsanitary management practices, specifically relating to 'sterilization of knives, chopping boards, and wiping cloths', 'sanitation training', 'not allowing access into the kitchen to outsiders', 'handling of food or utensils on shelves at a 15 cm distance away from floor', 'prevention of cross-contamination of cooked foods or vegetables', and 'records of kitchen access or inspection'. Thus, an effective food sanitation system is essential and should be implemented to improve the existing sanitary conditions in restaurants. However, the most important factor to achieving food sanitation management objectives is food handlers' self-motivation.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.27-56
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• 2011

As the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) has increases, it has been accompanied by an increase in the amount research attention paid to the factors contributing to the competitiveness of SMEs. Human resource management(HRM) should be the central themes of the discussion. This study is performed to provide basic and broad information of the current state of HRM in SME as the first step for such an effort. The conditions of HRM and the degree of introduction and utilization of six different HRM practices, incentive regulation, complaints handling system, suggestion system, employment stability system, performance evaluation system, and regular education and training, are analyzed through the data collected form 763 SMEs of four industries in Daegu, Only 2 percent of responding companies had been formed unions, 43% evaluate their employment conditions are difficult. And 39% of the SMEs appraise their human resources are more competitive than those of other companies. The ration of introduction of regular education and training system is highest and that of performance evaluation is lowest among the all responding companies. In addition, employment stability system is found as the most actively utilized HRM practice. The implications of these results and future research directions are suggested.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.255-265
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• 2016

Objectives: Mobile phones have become one of the most essential accessories in daily life. However, they may act as reservoir of infectious pathogens if they are used without hygienic practices in their handling. Therefore, this study aimed to isolate food-borne pathogens from mobile phones and investigate the characteristics of toxin genes and antibiotic susceptibility patterns. Methods: A total of 146 mobile phones were collected from 83 middle- and 63 high-school students in Busan. The surfaces of the mobile phones were aseptically swabbed. Results: Among the food-borne pathogens, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and Escherichia coli were detected in 26 (17.8%), 20 (13.7%) and four (2.7%) samples, respectively. There were no statistically significant differences according to school level, gender or phone type. None of four E. coli strains had pathogenic toxic genes. All of the B. cereus strains carried at least three different toxin genes among the nine enterotoxin and emetic toxin genes. Three out of 20 B. cereus strains (15%) possessed emetic toxin genes, which are rarely detected in food-poisoning cases in Korea. Among the 26 strains of S. aureus, the detection rate of staphylococcal enterotoxin genes, toxic shock syndrome toxin (tsst) and factors essential for methicillin resistance (femA) were 84.6%, 7.7% and 100%, respectively. In the antibiotic susceptibility test, there was no methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) or vancomycin-resistant S. aureus (VRSA). Conclusion: The results show that students' mobile phones in Busan were contaminated by food-borne pathogens which carried various toxic genes. Therefore, regular phone disinfection and hand hygiene is important in order to reduce cross-contamination.

• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.691-697
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• 2017

Volcanic ash has been predicted to be the main source of damage caused by a potential volcanic disaster around Mount Baekdu and the regions of the Korean peninsula. Computer simulations to predict the diffusion of volcanic ash should be performed according to prevalent meteorological situations within a predetermined time. Therefore, a workflow using pipelining is proposed to parallelize the software used for this computation. Due to the nature of volcanic calamities, the simulations need to be carried out for various plausible conditions given that the parameters cannot be precisely determined during the simulations, even at the time of a volcanic eruption. Among the given conditions, computations need to be first performed for the condition with the highest probability so that a response to the volcanic disaster can be provided using these results. Further action can then be performed later based on subsequent results. The computations need to be performed using a volcanic disaster damage prediction system on a computing server with limited computing performance. Hence, an optimal distribution of the computing resources is required. We propose a method through which specific data can be provided first to the proposed pipeline-based workflow.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.203-210
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to compare hand washing awareness and microorganism contamination on the hands for evaluating the difference between awareness and conditions of hand hygiene. The average number of total aerobic bacteria and coliform was 2.7 log CFU/hand and 1.8 log CFU/hand, respectively. Coliform bacteria were detected in all of the students tested in this study. The questionnaire survey data obtained via a direct interview were collected from 100 university students with microorganism analysis. A majority (90%) of the students recognized that good hand hygiene is important in order to prevent food poisoning. In the hand washing survey data, the responses suggesting "always washed" from "before eating food", "after handling money", "after finishing study" and "after visiting patients" were observed in 18, 13, 15 and 33 out of the 100 students, respectively. The questionnaire data of hand washing frequency and time duration showed that 14 students and 6 students answered "more than 8 times of hand washing per day" and "more than 30 seconds of hand washing time", respectively. These results indicated that improper hand washing practices and poor hand hygiene were identified in the majority of the students. This emphasizes the difference between awareness and conditions of hand hygiene. Repeated hand washing education about the frequency, time duration and methods is constantly required to improve hand hygiene. Installation of hand washing equipment in the space of a restaurant and cafeteria is suggested for enhancing hand hygiene before eating food.

• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.488-496
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• 2016

In this paper, we introduce a virtual reality interface for scientific visualization applications. Our VR interface is based on an open-source framework called VR Juggler. Although VR Juggler has its own advantages, it lacks some of the important functionalities needed for practical applications - event handling, synchronization and data sharing among cluster nodes, to name a few. We explain how these issues are resolved while developing the VR interface. Also, a new interface with a smart device, which replaces the virtual reality input device, is introduced. Finally, system usability test results are provided to prove the effectiveness of the proposed interfaces.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2018.05a
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• pp.319-322
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• 2018

Unplugged computing, the teaching and learning method, helps you learn the principles and concepts of computer science, and its advantage is that even elementary school students can easily understand it. Most of the North Korean Defector specialized alternative schools in the country have the purpose of having their students pass the qualification exam and be admitted to college. Therefore, the data, or information courses, are comprised of simple typing practices and basic office program handling. The purpose of the present study is to offer a teaching plan for these North Korean refugee adolescents, and we had assessed the courses in terms of its effectivity through a verification process. As a result, during the stage where we analyzed the answers from surveys, that they considered suggested curriculum for these specialized North Korean refugee alternative school was appropriate and have the potential to increase the student's satisfaction and interest.