• Information Systems Review
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.275-295
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• 2005

Changes in business environment caused by globalization of the world economy and the beginning of the knowledge society forced hospitals to equip with tools for the enhanced competitiveness. In other words, hospitals must aim three targets such as acquisition of advanced medical skills and equipments, improvement of service level for patients, and achievement of superior managerial performance simultaneously. This study has been done to suggest a way to reduce the possibility of hospital bill claim reduction as an alternative for the achievement of superior managerial performance. If the reduction rate of hospital bill claim is high, it will put negative impact on the hospital's revenue stream and hospital's reliability. Thus, if they want to stay competitive, hospitals need to device ways to cut the reduction rate as much as possible. In this study, a prototype system has been developed and implemented to check the possibility to cut the reduction rate through deep analysis of causes of reduction. The prototype first developed utilizing data mining techniques and the relation rules algorithm. Then the prototype was tested its performance using the D hospital's live data.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.699-706
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of pre-service teachers, which directly affect the concepts and ways of thinking of students who are studying Earth science. This work further seeks to identify pre-service Earth science teachers' Earth science-centered ways of thinking regarding the components and the process of water cycle. The concept sketch method was used to survey 50 pre-service teachers who majored in Earth science education at a National Teachers' University. The survey analyzed the preservice teachers' perceptions of a subordinate concept of Earth systems from the applied components of water cycle, and to code the applied concepts with the components of the water cycle based on a subordinate concept of Earth systems including Hydrosphere, Atmosphere, Geosphere, and Biosphere. The preservice teachers only perceived the components of the water cycle as ones in Hydrosphere and Atmosphere. In Biosphere, many participants lack the knowledge about how the actions of plants and animals, and human beings impact the water cycle. About the process of water cycle, the majority of the participants only perceived evaporation and precipitation as the process of cycling: their understanding about the underground flow of water was more lacking than the surface flow.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.1651-1659
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• 2017

Objective: Lao PDR's recent accession to the World Trade Organization necessitates a greater understanding of the patterns and risk of livestock production in order to better align national policy with the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. This eco-health study was conducted to improve understanding of the interrelations between market chains and zoonotic infection risks at two strategic cross border points between Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam. Methods: Information gained from smallholder farmer/trader interviews was integrated with serological surveys for pig-associated zoonoses-including hepatitis E virus (HEV), Taenia solium (T. solium) and trichinella-to identify potential linkages between disease risk and pig production and slaughter in low input systems common across the country. Results: Trichinella and HEV exposure was high in both humans and pigs in both study areas, significantly associated with pig slaughter and the subsequent consumption and handling of raw pork products. T. solium demonstrated a strong geographical and ethnic association with the northern study area bordering Vietnam. With the right knowledge and accessible, affordable inputs, the majority of smallholder farmers indicated a willingness to invest more in pig production, which could simultaneously improve livelihoods and decrease exposure to HEV, Trichinella, and T. solium through increased access to formal markets and an improved slaughter processes. Conclusion: The linkages identified when assessing disease risk in the context of potential economic and cultural drivers of transmission highlight the importance of a systems-based approach for the detection and control of zoonotic disease, and contributes to an improved understanding of the Lao PDR livestock sector.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.33-57
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• 2020

Although cryptocurrency which can promote innovation in the blockchain ecosystem is published for many useful purposes, in Korea, cryptocurrency is recognized only as a means of investment for the profit. The fact emphasizes only the speculative nature of the cryptocurrency, so investor negates the fundamental purpose of cryptocurrency and hinders innovation in the blockchain ecosystem. The purpose of this study is to investigate the cause of cryptocurrency perception and speculative behavior of domestic cryptocurrency investors from an academic perspective. We use a model that reflects the traditional considerations and cryptocurrency's characteristics in investment. Using the model, we can explain the cause of misperception of cryptocurrency through the theory of bounded rationality. In building the research model, we use variables of venture and angel investor's consideration used in investment decisions and collect the keywords from indexes of whitepaper to reflect the properties of cryptocurrency. This study mentions that, due to the imitations presented by Simon, individuals are forced to perceive cryptocurrency as a means of speculation and to make irrational decisions that impair ecosystem health. We analyze whether there is a significant difference in rationality in decision made by the sample under limited knowledge and imperfect information constraints. As a result, imperfect information constraints led investors to consider only irrational criteria in decision making. From this result, this study suggests that information asymmetry needs to be relaxed so that investment can be pursued together with rational investment and development of blockchain ecosystem. In addition, the industry can capture strategic insights for successful financing through ICO by enabling better understanding of investor decision-making.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.125-150
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• 2009

RFID(Radio Frequency IDentification) is a wireless frequency of recognition technology that can be used to recognize, trace, and identify people, things, and animals using radio frequency(RF). RFID will bring about many changes in manufacturing and distributions, among other areas. In accordance with the increasing importance of RFID techniques, great advancement has been made in RFID studies. Initially, the RFID research started as a research literature or case study. Recently, empirical research has floated on the surface for announcement. But most of the existing researches on RFID adoption have been restricted to a dichotomous measure of 'adoption vs. non-adoption' or adoption intention. In short, RFID research is still at an initial stage, mainly focusing on the research of the RFID performance, integration, and its usage has been considered dismissive. The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors are important for the RFID adoption and implementation with organizational resources. In this study, the organizational resources are classified into either finance resources or IT knowledge resources. A research model and four hypotheses are set up to identify the relationships among these variables based on the investigations of such theories as technological innovations, adoption stage, and organizational resources. In order to conduct this study, a survey was carried out from September 27, 2008 until October 23, 2008. The questionnaire was completed by 143 managers and workers from physical distribution and manufacturing companies related to the RFID in South Korea. 37 out of 180 surveys, which turned out unfit for the study, were discarded and the remaining 143(adoption stage 89, implementation stage 54) were used for the empirical study. The statistics were analyzed using Excel 2003 and SPSS 12.0. The results of the analysis are as follows. First, the adoption stage shows that perceived benefits, standardization, perceived cost savings, environmental uncertainty, and pressures from rival firms have significant effects on the intent of the RFID adoption. Further, the implementation stage shows that perceived benefits, standardization, environmental uncertainty, pressures from rival firms, inter-organizational cooperation, and inter-organizational trust have significant effects on the extent of the RFID use. In contrast, inter-organizational cooperation and inter-organizational trust did not show much impact on the intent of RFID adoption while perceived cost savings did not significantly affect the extent of RFID use. Second, in the adoption stage, financial issues had adverse effect on both inter-organizational cooperation and the intent against the RFID adoption. IT knowledge resources also had a deterring effect on both perceived cost savings and the extent of the RFID adoption. Third, in the implementation stage, finance resources had a moderate effect on environmental uncertainty and extent of RFID use while IT knowledge resources had also a moderate effect on perceived cost savings and the extent of the RFID use. Limitations and future research issues can be summarized as follows. First, it is difficult to say that the sample is large enough to be representative of the population. Second, because the sample of this study was conducted among manufacturers only, it may be limited in analyzing fully the effect on the industry as a whole. Third, in consideration of the fact that the organizational resources in the RFID study require a great deal of researches, this research may deem insufficient to fulfill the purpose that it initially set out to achieve. Future studies using performance research are, therefore, needed to help better understand the organizational level of the RFID adoption and implementation.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.75-99
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• 2012

Innovation can come from inside or outside organizations. Recently, organizations have begun turning to external knowledge more often, through various forms of collective intelligence (CI) as collaborative platform to solve complex problems. Several factors facilitate this CI utilization phenomenon. First, with the rapid development of Internet and social media, numerous web applications have become available to millions of the Internet users over the past few decades. Web 2.0 and social media have become innovative web applications that provide an environment for human social interaction and collaboration. Second, the diffusion of simple and easy-to-use technologies that enable users to interact and design web applications without programming skills have led to vast, previously unknown amounts of user-generated content. Finally, the Internet has enabled communities to connect and collaborate, creating a virtual world of CI. In this study, web enabled CI is defined as a composed ability of individuals who are acting as a single cognitive unit to achieve common goals, think reasonably, solve problems, make decisions, carry out complex tasks, and develop creative ideas collectively through participation and collaboration on the web. Although CI plays a critical role in organizational innovation and collaboration, the dubious quality of CI is still problem that is difficult to solve. In general, the quality level of content collected from the crowd is lower than that from professionals. Thus, it is important to identify determinants of CI quality and to analyze the relationship between CI quality and its usefulness. However, there is a lack of empirical study on the quality factors of web-enabled CI. There exist a variety of web enabled CI sites such as Threadless, iStockphoto or InnoCentive, Wikipedia, and Youtube. One of the most successful forms of web-enabled CI is the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, accessible all over the world. Another one example is Naver KnowledgeiN, a typical and popular CI site offering question and answer (Q&A) services. It is necessary to study whether or not different types of CI have a different effect on CI quality and its usefulness. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to answer to following research questions: ${\bullet}$ What determinants are important to CI quality? ${\bullet}$ What is the relationship between CI quality factors and the usefulness of web-enabled CI? ${\bullet}$ Does CI type have a moderating effect on the relationship between CI quality, its determinants, and CI usefulness? Online survey using Google Docs with email and Kakao Talk was conducted for collecting data from Wikipedia and Naver KnowledgeiN users. A totoal of 490 valid responses were collected, where users of Wikipedia were 220 while users of Naver KnowledgeiN were 270. Expertise of contributors, community size, and diversity of contributors were identified as core determinants of perceived CI quality. Perceived CI quality has significantly influenced perceived CI usefulness from a user's perspective. For improving CI quality, it is believed that organizations should ensure proper crowd size, facilitate CI contributors' diversity and attract as many expert contributors as possible. Hypotheses that CI type plays a role of moderator were partially supported. First, the relationship between expertise of contributors and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The expertise of contributors played a more important role in CI quality in the case of Q&A services such as Knowledge iN compared to wiki services such as Wikipedia. This implies that Q&A service requires more expertise and experiences in particular areas rather than the case of Wiki service to improve service quality. Second, the relationship between community size and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The community size has a greater effect on CI quality in case of Wiki service than that of Q&A service. The number of contributors in Wikipeda is important because Wiki is an encyclopedia service which is edited and revised repeatedly from many contributors while the answer given in Naver Knowledge iN can not be corrected by others. Finally, CI quality has a greater effect on its usefulness in case of Wiki service rather than Q&A service. In this paper, we suggested implications for practitioners and theorists. Organizations offering services based on collective intelligence try to improve expertise of contributeros, to increase the number of contributors, and to facilitate participation of various contributors.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2015

Korea has witnessed an increasing number of domestic patent applications, but a majority of them are not utilized to their maximum potential but end up becoming obsolete. According to the 2012 National Congress' Inspection of Administration, about 73% of patents possessed by universities and public-funded research institutions failed to lead to creating social values, but remain latent. One of the main problem of this issue is that patent creators such as individual researcher, university, or research institution lack abilities to commercialize their patents into viable businesses with those enterprises that are in need of them. Also, for enterprises side, it is hard to find the appropriate patents by searching keywords on all such occasions. This system proposes a patent recommendation system that can identify and recommend intellectual rights appropriate to users' interested fields among a rapidly accumulating number of patent assets in a more easy and efficient manner. The proposed system extracts core contents and technology sectors from the existing pool of patents, and combines it with secondary social knowledge, which derives from tags information created by users, in order to find the best patents recommended for users. That is to say, in an early stage where there is no accumulated tag information, the recommendation is done by utilizing content characteristics, which are identified through an analysis of key words contained in such parameters as 'Title of Invention' and 'Claim' among the various patent attributes. In order to do this, the suggested system extracts only nouns from patents and assigns a weight to each noun according to the importance of it in all patents by performing TF-IDF analysis. After that, it finds patents which have similar weights with preferred patents by a user. In this paper, this similarity is called a "Domain Similarity". Next, the suggested system extract technology sector's characteristics from patent document by analyzing the international technology classification code (International Patent Classification, IPC). Every patents have more than one IPC, and each user can attach more than one tag to the patents they like. Thus, each user has a set of IPC codes included in tagged patents. The suggested system manages this IPC set to analyze technology preference of each user and find the well-fitted patents for them. In order to do this, the suggeted system calcuates a 'Technology_Similarity' between a set of IPC codes and IPC codes contained in all other patents. After that, when the tag information of multiple users are accumulated, the system expands the recommendations in consideration of other users' social tag information relating to the patent that is tagged by a concerned user. The similarity between tag information of perferred 'patents by user and other patents are called a 'Social Simialrity' in this paper. Lastly, a 'Total Similarity' are calculated by adding these three differenent similarites and patents having the highest 'Total Similarity' are recommended to each user. The suggested system are applied to a total of 1,638 korean patents obtained from the Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) run by the Korea Intellectual Property Office. However, since this original dataset does not include tag information, we create virtual tag information and utilized this to construct the semi-virtual dataset. The proposed recommendation algorithm was implemented with JAVA, a computer programming language, and a prototype graphic user interface was also designed for this study. As the proposed system did not have dependent variables and uses virtual data, it is impossible to verify the recommendation system with a statistical method. Therefore, the study uses a scenario test method to verify the operational feasibility and recommendation effectiveness of the system. The results of this study are expected to improve the possibility of matching promising patents with the best suitable businesses. It is assumed that users' experiential knowledge can be accumulated, managed, and utilized in the As-Is patent system, which currently only manages standardized patent information.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.99-123
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• 2019

The software industry is a high value-added industry in the knowledge information age, and its importance is growing as it not only plays a key role in knowledge creation and utilization, but also secures global competitiveness. Among various SW available in today's business environment, Open Source Software(OSS) is rapidly expanding its activity area by not only leading software development, but also integrating with new information technology. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to empirically examine and analyze the effect of factors on the switching behavior to OSS. To accomplish the study's purpose, we suggest the research model based on "Push-Pull-Mooring" framework. This study empirically examines the two categories of antecedents for switching behavior toward OSS. The survey was conducted to employees at various firms that already switched OSS. A total of 268 responses were collected and analyzed by using the structural equational modeling. The results of this study are as follows; first, continuous maintenance cost, vender dependency, functional indifference, and SW resource inefficiency are significantly related to switch to OSS. Second, network-oriented support, testability and strategic flexibility are significantly related to switch to OSS. Finally, the results show that willingness to secures SW competitiveness has a moderating effect on the relationships between push factors and pull factor with exception of improved knowledge, and switch to OSS. The results of this study will contribute to fields related to OSS both theoretically and practically.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.59-72
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• 2019

Purpose - Blockchain technology, which has the characteristics of credibility, security, integrity and decentralization, has brought innovation to internet platforms that mediate peer to peer transactions, as well as changes to the contents distribution services. Blockchain-based copyright distribution platforms can solve problems which have been articulated on prior internet social networks: increased market dominance of platform business because of centralization with no reward to creators who upload on platforms, and lack of fairness, such as unfair profit distribution between the copyright holder and businesses. With this background, the current research confirmed the factors that affect the intention of usage and behaviors, targeting potential users of blockchain-based copyright distribution platforms. Research design, data, and methodology - Centered around the UTAUT2 Model, the research model was designed with 'Perceived Security' added as Construct, and 'Age' and 'Knowledge Level' added as moderating variables. For data, 607 responses were collected by an online survey, and 601 responses were included in the final analysis. We analyzed the research model and sample by using SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0 on the collected responses. Results - First, results of research on whether Constructs make positive effects on Intention of use is: social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, and perceived security had positive effects on intention of use, and performance expectancy, effort expectancy, hedonic motivation, and economic value did not. Second, results of the research on whether facilitating condition, habit, and intention of use made an impact on using behaviors, it was shown that only habit and intention of use made positive effects. Third, in two groups divided by age above or under 40, group effort expectancy, intention of use, habit, and intention of use had controlling effects, and facilitating condition, intention of use, perceived security, and intention of use had effects in both groups. Conclusions - The research shows that no matter how great a blockchain-based platform is, if advantages of blockchain are not proved in various industries and utilized in real life like the internet, blockchain-based distribution systems will develop slowly. Rather than a short-term inducement emphasizing technology, there is a need for a strategic approach that can foster the environment.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.1 s.108
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• pp.45-55
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• 2005

Knowledge of the relationship between crop yield and yield-limiting factors is essential for precision farming. However, developing this knowledge is not easy because these yield-limiting factors are interrelated and affect crop yield in different ways. In this study, data for grain yield and yield-limiting factors, including crop chlorophyll content, soil chemical properties, and topography were collected for a small (0.3 ha) rice paddy field in Korea and a large (36 ha) upland corn field in the USA, and relationships were investigated with path analysis. Using this approach, the effects of limiting factors on crop yield could be separated into direct effects and indirect effects acting through other factors. Path analysis provided more insight into these complex relationships than did simple correlation or multiple linear regression analysis. Results of correlation analysis for the rice paddy field showed that EC, Ca, and $SiO_2$ had significant (P<0.1) correlations with rice yield, while pH, Ca, Mg, Na, $SiO_2,\;and\;P_2O_5$ had significant correlations with the SPAD chlorophyll reading. Path analysis provided additional information about the importance and contribution paths of soil variables to rice yield and growth. Ca had the highest direct effect (0.52) and indirect effect via Mg (-0.37) on rice yield. The indirect effect of Mg through Ca (0.51) was higher than the direct effect (-0.38). Path analysis also enabled more appropriate selection of important factors limiting crop yield by considering cause-and-effect relationships among predictor and response variables. For example, although pH showed a positive correlation (r=0.35) with SPAD readings, the correlation was mainly due to the indirect positive effects acting through Mg and $SiO_2$, while pH not only showed negative direct effects, but also negatively impacted indirect effects of other variables on SPAD readings. For the large upland Missouri corn field, two topographic factors, elevation and slope, had significant (P<0.1) direct effects on yield and highly significant (P<0.01) correlations with other limiting factors. Based on the correlation analysis alone, P and K were determined to be nutrients that would increase corn yield for this field. With the help of path analysis, however, increases in Mg could also be expected to increase corn yield in this case. In general, path analysis results were consistent with published optimum ranges of nutrients for rice and com production. We conclude that path analysis can be a useful tool to investigate interrelationships between crop yield and yield limiting factors on a site-specific basis.