• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.297-311
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• 2011

This paper deals with a strategic investment decision model for improving investment profit in shipping industry. Despite the quantitative expansion of Korean shipping business, many shipping firms have suffered financial difficulties due to financial and operating risks that result from the characteristics of capital-intensive business as well as of volatility of shipping markets. As a result, managers in charge of making an investment decision, particularly in tramper business sector, are required to take both financial and operating risk factors into consideration. Put it differently, managers are strongly recommended to avoid these risks by ship asset play; buy-low and sell-high, which results in considerable capital gain and cost reduction. In addition, managers in shipping industry are also recommended to consider the ship chartering investment alternative when the freight markets show extreme volatility as the case of 2008 triggered by sub-prime mortgage financial crisis in USA. For example, the BDI suffered plunging down from 1000 in 2008 to 100 in 2010. Consequently, the 4th largest shipping company in Korea, DAEHAN Shipping Co., has collapsed primarily due to excessive tonnage expansion during the peak time of bulk market. In sum, the strategic investment decision model, suggested in this paper, is designed to include such factors as capital gain by asset play, timely chartering for alternative shipping service, and optimization of operating profit by tonnage adjustment in accordance with change in the shipping markets concerned.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.141-159
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• 2018

The study aims to explore the factors that affect the value perception, satisfaction, and frequency of smart phone taxi applications in Shanghai, China, and commuters. According to a survey conducted on the actual use of taxi application, the majority of the customers responded that they have been using taxi apps for more than one or two years, and the results showed that they use taxi apps once or twice a week. It also showed that the actual use of taxi apps varies depending on their age and academic background. Among the value attributes of smart phone taxi applications, the respondents perceived ease of use as the highest at 4.41 points out of 5 point scale, while the risk perception was the lowest at 3.34 points. Finally, when social demographic characteristics and the nature of taxi app use were controlled, the value perception variables had a significant influence on taxi application satisfaction. The higher the perception of service quality, usefulness, and system usability, the higher the satisfaction levels were. In particular, the impact of perceived usefulness and system usability perception was high.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.459-473
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• 2021

Purpose: Although numerous systematic reviews or meta-analysis have reported the hypotensive effects of garlic, the application of these results in the area of functional food is limited. This is because the trials used various garlic preparations and patients with differing hypertensive intensities. To validate the use of garlic powder as a blood pressure lowering functional food, we performed the current meta-analysis, focusing on the study of prehypertensive subjects. Methods: Literature search was carried out using various database up to July 2020, including PubMed, Cochrane, ScienceDirect and Korean studies Information Service System, and each study was screened by pre-stated inclusion/exclusion criteria. We identified nine trials that met the eligibility, of which two studies with moderate or high risk of bias were excluded. Results: Meta-analysis of the seven studies revealed that an intake of garlic powder significantly lowered the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by -6.0 mmHg (95% confidence interval [CI], -11.2, -0.8; p = 0.025) and -2.7 mmHg (95% CI, -5.3, -0.1; p = 0.046), respectively. Shapes of the funnel plot for both SBP and DBP seemed symmetrical, and the Egger's regression revealed no publication bias. Moreover, duration of the intervention period was inversely associated with the pooled effects of garlic powder on SBP (p = 0.019) and DBP (p = 0.019), and this result was supported by the subgroup-analysis. The daily dose of garlic powder, baseline value of each biomarker, and subject number, did not moderate the effects on SBP and DBP. Conclusion: Results of the present meta-analysis indicate that garlic powder supplements are superior to placebo for improving the BP in prehypertensive individuals.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1331-1340
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• 2020

Object detection in maritime means that the captain detects floating objects that has a risk of colliding with the ship using the computer automatically and as accurately as human eyes. In conventional ships, the presence and distance of objects are determined through radar waves. However, it cannot identify the shape and type. In contrast, with the development of AI, cameras help accurately identify obstacles on the sea route with excellent performance in detecting or recognizing objects. The computer must calculate high-volume pixels to analyze digital images. However, the CPU is specialized for sequential processing; the processing speed is very slow, and smooth service support or security is not guaranteed. Accordingly, this study developed maritime object detection software and implemented it with FPGA to accelerate the processing of large-scale computations. Additionally, the system implementation was improved through embedded boards and FPGA interface, achieving 30 times faster performance than the existing algorithm and a three-times faster entire system.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.15 no.sup1
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• pp.32-40
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• 2021

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Considering the high number of deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Latin American countries, together with multiple factors that increase the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, we aimed to determine 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels and its association with mortality in patients with critical COVID-19. SUBJECTS/METHODS: This was a prospective observational study including adult patients with critical COVID-19. Data, including clinical characteristics and 25(OH)D levels measured at the time of intensive care unit admission, were collected. All patients were followed until hospital discharge or in-hospital death. The patients were divided into those surviving and deceased patient groups, and univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine independent predictors of in hospital mortality. RESULTS: The entire cohort comprised 94 patients with critical COVID-19 (males, 59.6%; median age, 61.5 years). The median 25(OH)D level was 12.7 ng/mL, and 15 (16%) and 79 (84%) patients had vitamin D insufficiency and vitamin D deficiency, respectively. The median serum 25(OH)D level was significantly lower in deceased patients compared with surviving (12.1 vs. 18.7 ng/mL, P < 0.001). Vitamin D deficiency was present in 100% of the deceased patients. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that age, body mass index, other risk factors, and 25(OH)D level were independent predictors of mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Vitamin D deficiency was present in 84% of critical COVID-19 patients. Serum 25(OH)D was independently associated with mortality in critical patients with COVID-19.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.464-474
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• 2022

Objectives: We introduced the cohort studies included in the Korean Cohort Consortium (KCC), focusing on large-scale cohort studies established in Korea with a prolonged follow-up period. Moreover, we also provided projections of the follow-up and estimates of the sample size that would be necessary for big-data analyses based on pooling established cohort studies, including population-based genomic studies. Methods: We mainly focused on the characteristics of individual cohort studies from the KCC. We developed "PROFAN", a Shiny application for projecting the follow-up period to achieve a certain number of cases when pooling established cohort studies. As examples, we projected the follow-up periods for 5000 cases of gastric cancer, 2500 cases of prostate and breast cancer, and 500 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The sample sizes for sequencing-based analyses based on a 1:1 case-control study were also calculated. Results: The KCC consisted of 8 individual cohort studies, of which 3 were community-based and 5 were health screening-based cohorts. The population-based cohort studies were mainly organized by Korean government agencies and research institutes. The projected follow-up period was at least 10 years to achieve 5000 cases based on a cohort of 0.5 million participants. The mean of the minimum to maximum sample sizes for performing sequencing analyses was 5917-72 102. Conclusions: We propose an approach to establish a large-scale consortium based on the standardization and harmonization of existing cohort studies to obtain adequate statistical power with a sufficient sample size to analyze high-risk groups or rare cancer subtypes.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.134-151
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• 2011

The strategy for brand alliance is a new type of franchise to iron out the problems like the hotel restaurant's structural contradiction and decreasing profits caused by keen competition with external restaurants. This study is purposed to present the decisive factors for the brand alliance throughexamining the correlations between the brand restaurant designation standards and the expected effects from local low- and mid-priced hotel's brand alliance. The questionnaires were distributed to instructors and professors who have experience in teaching the food and beverage sections at college's hotel and tourism departments and 100 specialists at managerial level of a hotel's food and beverage parts.This survey was conducted for 20 days from December 2 to 22, 2004 and analyzed by independent t-test and canonical correlation analysis. The findings of this survey are as follows.Firstly, the service of the expected effect factors of the brand alliance was recognized relatively high by the specialists in hotel industry, while the sales effect factor of restaurant designation standards was recognized higher by the academic experts.The specialists of the hotel industry recognized the factors of menu and corporate culture higher than the academic experts. Secondly, the entire factors of the brand restaurant designation standards showed a correlation with the whole factors of the restaurant designation standards.In particular, the 'menu' factor presented the most influential to the expected effects of brand alliance.The factors of 'risk reduction' and 'synergy effect' exerted the strongest effect on the restaurant designation standards, which indicated the mutual correlation between the expected effect of brand alliance and the restaurant designation standards. Based on this study, the correlation between the expected effect of brand alliance and brand restaurant designation standards may play a primary role to choose a partner for the brand alliance, a decisive factor for the success.The execution of the brand alliance or the method to designate the alliance partner may vary from the hotel's desirable effects when the brand alliance is determined.In other words, the partner designation standards should be corresponding to the expected effects from the brand alliance between hotel and brand restaurant, and the academic and industrial experts' perceived differences in the expected effects of brand alliance and restaurant designation standards should be clarified to display the direction of decision-making and find the potential risks.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.35-38
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• 2015

62-year-old patient who had past history of endoscopic submucosal dissection for early gastric cancer at September 2008, underwent endoscopic submucosal dissection of esophagus for early esophageal cancer at mid esophagus during health screening service. Because there was a high risk of lymph node metastasis at biopsy results, concurrent chemoradiotherapy was added to endoscopic submucosal dissection. There was a metachronous cancer at mid-esophagus at March 2013. He underwent endoscopic mucosal resection and photodynamic therapy. Concurrentchemoradiotherapy after endoscopic submucosal dissection is an effective treatment method.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.233-248
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• 2023

The increasing integration of intelligent information technologies within organizational systems has amplified the risk to personal information security. This escalation, in turn, has fueled growing apprehension about an organization's capabilities in safeguarding user data. While Internet users adopt a multifaceted approach in assessing a company's information security, existing research on the multiple dimensions of information security is decidedly sparse. Moreover, there is a conspicuous gap in investigations exploring whether users' evaluations of organizational information security differ across industry types. With an aim to bridge these gaps, our study strives to identify which information security attributes users perceive as most critical and to delve deeper into potential variations in these attributes across different industry sectors. To this end, we conducted a structured survey involving 498 users and utilized the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the relative significance of various information security attributes. Our results indicate that users place the greatest importance on the technological dimension of information security, followed closely by transparency. In the technological arena, banks and domestic portal providers earned high ratings, while for transparency, banks and governmental agencies stood out. Contrarily, social media providers received the lowest evaluations in both domains. By introducing a multidimensional model of information security attributes and highlighting the relative importance of each in the realm of information security research, this study provides a significant theoretical contribution. Moreover, the practical implications are noteworthy: our findings serve as a foundational resource for Internet service companies to discern the security attributes that demand their attention, thereby facilitating an enhancement of their information security measures.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.450-456
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• 2023

Background: This study aims to develop a "Predictive Model for the Possibility of Collection Delinquent Health Insurance Contributions" for the National Health Insurance Service to enhance administrative efficiency in protecting and collecting contributions from livelihood-type defaulters. Additionally, it aims to establish customized collection management strategies based on individuals' ability to pay health insurance contributions. Methods: Firstly, to develop the "Predictive Model for the Possibility of Collection Delinquent Health Insurance Contributions," a series of processes including (1) analysis of defaulter characteristics, (2) model estimation and performance evaluation, and (3) model derivation will be conducted. Secondly, using the predictions from the model, individuals will be categorized into four types based on their payment ability and livelihood status, and collection strategies will be provided for each type. Results: Firstly, the regression equation of the prediction model is as follows: phat = exp (0.4729 + 0.0392 × gender + 0.00894 × age + 0.000563 × total income - 0.2849 × low-income type enrollee - 0.2271 × delinquency frequency + 0.9714 × delinquency action + 0.0851 × reduction) / [1 + exp (0.4729 + 0.0392 × gender + 0.00894 × age + 0.000563 × total income - 0.2849 × low-income type enrollee - 0.2271 × delinquency frequency + 0.9714 × delinquency action + 0.0851 × reduction)]. The prediction performance is an accuracy of 86.0%, sensitivity of 87.0%, and specificity of 84.8%. Secondly, individuals were categorized into four types based on livelihood status and payment ability. Particularly, the "support needed group," which comprises those with low payment ability and low-income type enrollee, suggests enhancing contribution relief and support policies. On the other hand, the "high-risk group," which comprises those without livelihood type and low payment ability, suggests implementing stricter default handling to improve collection rates. Conclusion: Upon examining the regression equation of the prediction model, it is evident that individuals with lower income levels and a history of past defaults have a lower probability of payment. This implies that defaults occur among those without the ability to bear the burden of health insurance contributions, leading to long-term defaults. Social insurance operates on the principles of mandatory participation and burden based on the ability to pay. Therefore, it is necessary to develop policies that consider individuals' ability to pay, such as transitioning livelihood-type defaulters to medical assistance or reducing insurance contribution burdens.