Background: We retrospectively evaluated the clinical results of surgically managing patients with Ebstein's anomaly. Material and Method: Between Feb. f 984 and June 2006, 50 patients who underwent surgical treatment for Ebstein's anomaly at Yonsei Cardiovascular Center were retrospectively reviewed. The mean age of the patients was 26.9 years and 19 patients were male, Associated anomalies included atrial septal defect (33), patent ductus arteriosus (2), ventricular septal defect (1), and pulmonary stenosis (4), and 90%, (45/50) of the patients had more than a moderate degree of tricuspid regurgitation. Carpentier type A was present in 6 patients, type B in 26, type C in 14 and type D in 4. Ten patients were associated with WPW syndrome. Conservative surgery was possible in 31 patients (tricuspid annuloplasty, plication of the atrialized RV), Fontan's operation was peformed in 4 patients, tricuspid valve replacement was done in 12 and palliative surgery was done in 2 patients. Thirteen patients were associated with hi-directional cavopulmonary shunt (BCPS: one and a half ventricular repairs): 10 patients with WPW syndrome and 4 patients with atrial fibrillation underwent concomitant ablation. Result: The postoperative median NYHA functional class
Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's
The distribution and practical classification of sandy paddy soils, which have the most extensive acreage among low productive paddy soils in Korea and have distinctive improvement effects, were studied to propose a tentative new classification system of sandy textured paddy soils as a means of improving the "Paddy Soil Type Classification" scheme used. The results are summarized as follows; 1. The potential productivity of sandy textured paddy soils was about 86% of normal paddy and the coefficient of variation was relatively high indicating that the properties of soils included were not sufficiently homogeneous. 2. As the poorly drained and halomorphic (> 16 mmhos/cm of E.C. at
As we considered in the main subjects, investigations on the theory of 'Doctrine on five elements' motion and six kinds of natural factors(運氣學說)' through 'Wang Bing's Commentary(王氷 注本)' of 'The seven great chapters in The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic Su Wen' ("黃帝內經素問 七篇大論") are as follows. (1) In The seven great chapters("七篇大論")' Wang Bing supplement theory and in the academic aspects as a interpreter, judging from 'forget(亡)' character. expressed in the 'The missing chapters("素問遺篇")', 'Bonbyung-ron("本病論")' and 'Jabeob-ron(刺法論)', 'The seven great chapters("七篇大論")' must be supplementary work by Wang Bing. Besides, he quoted such forty books as medical books, taoist books, confucianist books, miscellaneous books, etc in the commentary and the contents quoted in the 'Su Wen(素問)' and 'Ling Shu("靈樞")' scripture nearly occupy in the book. As a method of interpreting scripiure as scripture, he edited the order of 'Internal Classic("內經")' ascended from the ancient time and when he compensated for commentary, with exhaustive scholarly mind and by observing the natural phenomena practically and writing the pathology and the methods of treatment. We knew that the book is combined with the study of 'Doctrine on five elements motion and six kinds of natural factors(運氣學說)' (2) When we compare, analyze the similar phrase of 'The seven great chapters in The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic Su Wen'("黃帝內經素問ㆍ七篇大論") through 'Wang Bing's Commentary(王氷 注本)', he tells abouts organized 'five elements(五行)' and 'heaven's regularly movement(天道運行)' rather than 'Emyangengsangdae-ron("陰陽應象大論")' in 'The seven great chapters("七篇大論")'. Also the 'Ohanunhangdae-ron("五運行大論")' because the repeated sentences with 'Emyangengsangdae-ron("陰陽應象大論")' is long they are omitted. And in the 'Youkmijidae-ron("六微旨大論")', 'Cheonjin ideology(天眞四象)' based on the 'Sanggocheonjin- ron("上古天眞論")', 'Sagijosindae-ron("四氣調神大論")' is written and in the 'Gigoupyondae-ron("氣交變大論")', the syndrome and symptom are explained in detail rather than 'Janggibeobsi-ron("藏氣法時論")', 'Okgijinjang-ron ("玉機眞藏論")' and in the 'Osangieongdae-ron("五常政大論")', the concept of 'five element(五行)' of the 'Gemgwejineon-ron("金櫃眞言論")' is expanded to 'the five elements' motion concept(五運槪念)' and in the 'Youkwonjeonggidae-ron("六元正紀大論")', explanations of 'The five elements' motion and six kinds of natural factors(運氣)' function are mentioned mainly and instead systematic pathology is not revealed rather than 'Emyangengsangdae-ron("陰陽應象大論")'. And in the 'Jijinyodae-ron("至眞要大論")', explanations of the change of atmosphere which correspond to treatment principle by 'The three Yin and Yang(三陰三陽)' as a progressed concepts are revealed. Therefore there are much similarity between the phrase of 'Emyangengsangdae-ron("陰陽應象大論")' and 'chapters of addition(補缺之篇)'. Generally, the doctrine which 'The seven great chapters("七篇大論")' are added by Wang Bing(王氷) is supported because there are more profound concepts rather than the other chapter in 'The seven great chapters("七篇大論")'. (3) When we study Wang Bing's(王氷) 'Pattern on five elements motion and six kinds of natural factors(運氣格局)' in 'The seven great chapter("七篇大論")', in the 'Cheonwongi-dae-ron("天元紀大論")', With 'Cheonjin ideology(天眞思想)' and the concepts of 'Owang(旺)'
Up to the present the scholastic achievements in the history of the medical system have been rather scare despite its importance in the Korean History. Hence, this dissertation attempts to examine the significance of the institute in the Korean History, covering the period from the ancient times through the early Chosun-Dynasty. In the ancient times, the medical practice relied primarily upon human instincts and experiences at the same time, shaman's incantations were widely believed to cure diseases, the workings of evil spirits supposedly. For the period from the Old Chosun through Samhan(巫堂), Chinese refugees brought a long medical knowledge and skills of the continent. New Chinese medicine, traditional practices and incantations were generally used at this time. Medicine and the medical system were arranged by the period of the Three Countries(三國時代). No definite record concerning Koguryo remains now. As for Paekje, however, history shows that they set up the system under the Chinese influence, assigning medical posts such as Euibaksa(medical doctor), Chaeyaksa(pharmacist), and Jukeumsa(medicine man) within Yakbu(department of medicine). Scientifically advanced, they sent experts to Japan, giving a tremendous influence on the development of the science on ancient Japan. After the unification of the three countries, Shilla had their own system after the model of Dang(唐). This system of the Unified Shilla was continued down to Koryo and became the backbone of the future ones. In the ancient time religion and medicine were closely related. The curative function of the shaman was absolute. Buddhism played a notable part in medical practice, too, producing numerous medical monks. The medical system of Koryo followed the model of Dang with some borrowings from Song(宋). Sangyakkuk(尙藥局) was to deal exclusively with the diseases of the monarch whereas Taeeuigam(太醫監) was the central office to handle the national medical administration and the qualification test and education for doctors. In addition, Dongsodaebiwon(東西大悲院), Jewibo(濟危寶), and Hyeminkuk(惠民局) were public hospitals for the people, and a few aristocrats practiced medicine privately. In 987, the 6th year of Songjong(成宗), local medical operations were installed for curing the sick and educating medical students. Later Hyonjong(顯宗), established Yakjom(clinics, 藥店) throughout the country and officials were sent there to see patients. Foreign experts, mainly from Song, were invited frequently to deliver their advanced technology, and contributed to the great progress of the science in Korea. Medical officials were equipped with better land and salary than others, enjoying appropriate social respect. Koryo exchanged doctors, medicine and books mainly with Song, but also had substantial interrelations with Yuan(元), Ming(明), Kitan(契丹), Yojin(女眞), and Japan. Among them, however, Song was most influential to the development of medicine in Koryo. During Koryo Dynasty Buddhism, the national religion at the time, exercised bigger effect on medicine than in any other period. By conducting national ceremonies and public rituals to cure diseases, Taoism also affected the way people regarded illness. Curative shamanism was still in practice as well. These religious practices, however, were now engaged only when medication was already in use or when medicine could not held not help any more. The advanced medical system of Koryo were handed down to Chosun and served the basis for further progress. Hence, then played well the role to connect the ancient medicine and the modern one. The early Chosun followed and systemized the scientific and technical achievement in medicine during the Koryo Dynasty, and furthermore, founded the basis of the future developments. Especially the 70 years approximately from the reign of Sejong(世宗) to that of Songjong(成宗) withnessed a termendous progress in the field with the reestablishment of the medical system. The functions of the three medical institute Naeeuiwon(內醫院), Joneuigam(典醫監), Hyeminkuk(惠民局) were expanded. The second, particualy, not only systemized all the medical practices of the whole nation, but also grew and distributed domestic medicaments which had been continually developed since the late Koryo period. In addition, Hyeminso(惠民局, Hwarinwon(活人院)) and Jesaenwon(濟生院)(later merged to the first) played certain parts in the curing illness. Despite the active medical education in the capital and the country, the results were not substantial, for the aristocracy avoided the profession due to the social prejudice against technicians including medical docotors. During the early Chosun-Dynasty, the science was divided into Chimgueui (acupuncturist), Naryogeui(specialist in scrofula) and Chijongeui (specialist in boil). For the textbooks, those for the qualification exam were used, including several written by the natives. With the introduction on Neoconfucianism(性理學) which reinforced sexual segregation, female doctors appeared for the female patients who refused to be seen by male doctors. This system first appeared in 1406, the sixth year of Taejong(太宗), but finally set up during the reign of Sejong. As slaves to the offices, the lowest class, female doctors drew no respect. However, this is still significant in the aspect of women's participation in society. They were precedents of midwives. Medical officials were selected through the civil exam and a special test. Those who passed exams were given temporary jobs and took permanent posts later. At that time the test score, the work experience and the performance record of the prospective doctor were all taken into consideration, for it was a specialized office. Most doctors were given posts that changed every six months, and therefore had fewer chances for a goverment office than the aristocracy. At the beginning the social status of those in medicine was not that low, but with the prejudice gradully rising among the aristocracy, it became generally agreed to belong to the upper-middle technician class. Dealing with life, however, they received social respect and courtesy from the public. Sometimes they collected wealth with their skills. They kept improving techniques and finally came to take an important share in modernization process during the late Chosun-Dynasty.
As the pace of competition dramatically accelerates and the complexity of change grows, a variety of research have been conducted to improve firms' short-term performance and to enhance firms' long-term survival. In particular, researchers and practitioners have paid their attention to identify promising technologies that lead competitive advantage to a firm. Discovery of promising technology depends on how a firm evaluates the value of technologies, thus many evaluating methods have been proposed. Experts' opinion based approaches have been widely accepted to predict the value of technologies. Whereas this approach provides in-depth analysis and ensures validity of analysis results, it is usually cost-and time-ineffective and is limited to qualitative evaluation. Considerable studies attempt to forecast the value of technology by using patent information to overcome the limitation of experts' opinion based approach. Patent based technology evaluation has served as a valuable assessment approach of the technological forecasting because it contains a full and practical description of technology with uniform structure. Furthermore, it provides information that is not divulged in any other sources. Although patent information based approach has contributed to our understanding of prediction of promising technologies, it has some limitations because prediction has been made based on the past patent information, and the interpretations of patent analyses are not consistent. In order to fill this gap, this study proposes a technology forecasting methodology by integrating patent information approach and artificial intelligence method. The methodology consists of three modules : evaluation of technologies promising, implementation of technologies value prediction model, and recommendation of promising technologies. In the first module, technologies promising is evaluated from three different and complementary dimensions; impact, fusion, and diffusion perspectives. The impact of technologies refers to their influence on future technologies development and improvement, and is also clearly associated with their monetary value. The fusion of technologies denotes the extent to which a technology fuses different technologies, and represents the breadth of search underlying the technology. The fusion of technologies can be calculated based on technology or patent, thus this study measures two types of fusion index; fusion index per technology and fusion index per patent. Finally, the diffusion of technologies denotes their degree of applicability across scientific and technological fields. In the same vein, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent are considered respectively. In the second module, technologies value prediction model is implemented using artificial intelligence method. This studies use the values of five indexes (i.e., impact index, fusion index per technology, fusion index per patent, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent) at different time (e.g., t-n, t-n-1, t-n-2,
In Smart Education, the roles of digital textbook is very important as face-to-face media to learners. The standardization of digital textbook will promote the industrialization of digital textbook for contents providers and distributers as well as learner and instructors. In this study, the following three objectives-oriented digital textbooks are looking for ways to standardize. (1) digital textbooks should undertake the role of the media for blended learning which supports on-off classes, should be operating on common EPUB viewer without special dedicated viewer, should utilize the existing framework of the e-learning learning contents and learning management. The reason to consider the EPUB as the standard for digital textbooks is that digital textbooks don't need to specify antoher standard for the form of books, and can take advantage od industrial base with EPUB standards-rich content and distribution structure (2) digital textbooks should provide a low-cost open market service that are currently available as the standard open software (3) To provide appropriate learning feedback information to students, digital textbooks should provide a foundation which accumulates and manages all the learning activity information according to standard infrastructure for educational Big Data processing. In this study, the digital textbook in a smart education environment was referred to open digital textbook. The components of open digital textbooks service framework are (1) digital textbook terminals such as smart pad, smart TVs, smart phones, PC, etc., (2) digital textbooks platform to show and perform digital contents on digital textbook terminals, (3) learning contents repository, which exist on the cloud, maintains accredited learning, (4) App Store providing and distributing secondary learning contents and learning tools by learning contents developing companies, and (5) LMS as a learning support/management tool which on-site class teacher use for creating classroom instruction materials. In addition, locating all of the hardware and software implement a smart education service within the cloud must have take advantage of the cloud computing for efficient management and reducing expense. The open digital textbooks of smart education is consdered as providing e-book style interface of LMS to learners. In open digital textbooks, the representation of text, image, audio, video, equations, etc. is basic function. But painting, writing, problem solving, etc are beyond the capabilities of a simple e-book. The Communication of teacher-to-student, learner-to-learnert, tems-to-team is required by using the open digital textbook. To represent student demographics, portfolio information, and class information, the standard used in e-learning is desirable. To process learner tracking information about the activities of the learner for LMS(Learning Management System), open digital textbook must have the recording function and the commnincating function with LMS. DRM is a function for protecting various copyright. Currently DRMs of e-boook are controlled by the corresponding book viewer. If open digital textbook admitt DRM that is used in a variety of different DRM standards of various e-book viewer, the implementation of redundant features can be avoided. Security/privacy functions are required to protect information about the study or instruction from a third party UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is learning support function for those with disabilities have difficulty in learning courses. The open digital textbook, which is based on E-book standard EPUB 3.0, must (1) record the learning activity log information, and (2) communicate with the server to support the learning activity. While the recording function and the communication function, which is not determined on current standards, is implemented as a JavaScript and is utilized in the current EPUB 3.0 viewer, ths strategy of proposing such recording and communication functions as the next generation of e-book standard, or special standard (EPUB 3.0 for education) is needed. Future research in this study will implement open source program with the proposed open digital textbook standard and present a new educational services including Big Data analysis.
Contemporary belief is that the creative talented can create new knowledge and lead national development, so lots of countries in the world have interest in Gifted Education. As we well know, U.S.A., England, Russia, Germany, Australia, Israel, and Singapore enforce related laws in Gifted Education to offer Gifted Classes, and our government has also created an Improvement Act in January, 2000 and Enforcement Ordinance for Gifted Improvement Act was also announced in April, 2002. Through this initiation Gifted Education can be possible. Enforcement Ordinance was revised in October, 2008. The main purpose of this revision was to expand the opportunity of Gifted Education to students with special education needs. One of these programs is, the opportunity of Gifted Education to be offered to lots of the Gifted by establishing Special Classes at each school. Also, it is important that the quality of Gifted Education should be combined with the expansion of opportunity for the Gifted. Social opinion is that it will be reckless only to expand the opportunity for the Gifted Education, therefore, assessment on the Teaching and Learning Program for the Gifted is indispensible. In this study, 3 middle schools were selected for the Teaching and Learning Programs in mathematics. Each 1st Grade was reviewed and analyzed through comparative tables between Regular and Gifted Education Programs. Also reviewed was the content of what should be taught, and programs were evaluated on assessment standards which were revised and modified from the present teaching and learning programs in mathematics. Below, research issues were set up to assess the formation of content areas and appropriateness for Teaching and Learning Programs for the Gifted in mathematics. A. Is the formation of special class content areas complying with the 7th national curriculum? 1. Which content areas of regular curriculum is applied in this program? 2. Among Enrichment and Selection in Curriculum for the Gifted, which one is applied in this programs? 3. Are the content areas organized and performed properly? B. Are the Programs for the Gifted appropriate? 1. Are the Educational goals of the Programs aligned with that of Gifted Education in mathematics? 2. Does the content of each program reflect characteristics of mathematical Gifted students and express their mathematical talents? 3. Are Teaching and Learning models and methods diverse enough to express their talents? 4. Can the assessment on each program reflect the Learning goals and content, and enhance Gifted students' thinking ability? The conclusions are as follows: First, the best contents to be taught to the mathematical Gifted were found to be the Numeration, Arithmetic, Geometry, Measurement, Probability, Statistics, Letter and Expression. Also, Enrichment area and Selection area within the curriculum for the Gifted were offered in many ways so that their Giftedness could be fully enhanced. Second, the educational goals of Teaching and Learning Programs for the mathematical Gifted students were in accordance with the directions of mathematical education and philosophy. Also, it reflected that their research ability was successful in reaching the educational goals of improving creativity, thinking ability, problem-solving ability, all of which are required in the set curriculum. In order to accomplish the goals, visualization, symbolization, phasing and exploring strategies were used effectively. Many different of lecturing types, cooperative learning, discovery learning were applied to accomplish the Teaching and Learning model goals. For Teaching and Learning activities, various strategies and models were used to express the students' talents. These activities included experiments, exploration, application, estimation, guess, discussion (conjecture and refutation) reconsideration and so on. There were no mention to the students about evaluation and paper exams. While the program activities were being performed, educational goals and assessment methods were reflected, that is, products, performance assessment, and portfolio were mainly used rather than just paper assessment.
Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) is one class of the powerful Deep Neural Network that can analyze and learn hierarchies of visual features. Originally, first neural network (Neocognitron) was introduced in the 80s. At that time, the neural network was not broadly used in both industry and academic field by cause of large-scale dataset shortage and low computational power. However, after a few decades later in 2012, Krizhevsky made a breakthrough on ILSVRC-12 visual recognition competition using Convolutional Neural Network. That breakthrough revived people interest in the neural network. The success of Convolutional Neural Network is achieved with two main factors. First of them is the emergence of advanced hardware (GPUs) for sufficient parallel computation. Second is the availability of large-scale datasets such as ImageNet (ILSVRC) dataset for training. Unfortunately, many new domains are bottlenecked by these factors. For most domains, it is difficult and requires lots of effort to gather large-scale dataset to train a ConvNet. Moreover, even if we have a large-scale dataset, training ConvNet from scratch is required expensive resource and time-consuming. These two obstacles can be solved by using transfer learning. Transfer learning is a method for transferring the knowledge from a source domain to new domain. There are two major Transfer learning cases. First one is ConvNet as fixed feature extractor, and the second one is Fine-tune the ConvNet on a new dataset. In the first case, using pre-trained ConvNet (such as on ImageNet) to compute feed-forward activations of the image into the ConvNet and extract activation features from specific layers. In the second case, replacing and retraining the ConvNet classifier on the new dataset, then fine-tune the weights of the pre-trained network with the backpropagation. In this paper, we focus on using multiple ConvNet layers as a fixed feature extractor only. However, applying features with high dimensional complexity that is directly extracted from multiple ConvNet layers is still a challenging problem. We observe that features extracted from multiple ConvNet layers address the different characteristics of the image which means better representation could be obtained by finding the optimal combination of multiple ConvNet layers. Based on that observation, we propose to employ multiple ConvNet layer representations for transfer learning instead of a single ConvNet layer representation. Overall, our primary pipeline has three steps. Firstly, images from target task are given as input to ConvNet, then that image will be feed-forwarded into pre-trained AlexNet, and the activation features from three fully connected convolutional layers are extracted. Secondly, activation features of three ConvNet layers are concatenated to obtain multiple ConvNet layers representation because it will gain more information about an image. When three fully connected layer features concatenated, the occurring image representation would have 9192 (4096+4096+1000) dimension features. However, features extracted from multiple ConvNet layers are redundant and noisy since they are extracted from the same ConvNet. Thus, a third step, we will use Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to select salient features before the training phase. When salient features are obtained, the classifier can classify image more accurately, and the performance of transfer learning can be improved. To evaluate proposed method, experiments are conducted in three standard datasets (Caltech-256, VOC07, and SUN397) to compare multiple ConvNet layer representations against single ConvNet layer representation by using PCA for feature selection and dimension reduction. Our experiments demonstrated the importance of feature selection for multiple ConvNet layer representation. Moreover, our proposed approach achieved 75.6% accuracy compared to 73.9% accuracy achieved by FC7 layer on the Caltech-256 dataset, 73.1% accuracy compared to 69.2% accuracy achieved by FC8 layer on the VOC07 dataset, 52.2% accuracy compared to 48.7% accuracy achieved by FC7 layer on the SUN397 dataset. We also showed that our proposed approach achieved superior performance, 2.8%, 2.1% and 3.1% accuracy improvement on Caltech-256, VOC07, and SUN397 dataset respectively compare to existing work.
Understanding consumers' preferences and use of media types is imperative for marketing and advertising managers, especially in today's fragmented market. A clear understanding assists managers in making more effective selections of appropriate media outlets, yet individuals' choices of type and use of media are based on a variety of characteristics. This paper examines one personality trait, sensation seeking, which has not appeared in the literature examining "new" media preferences and use. Sensation seeking is a personality trait defined as "the need for varied, novel, and complex sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experiences" (Zuckerman 1979). Six hypotheses were developed from a review of the literature. Particular attention was given to the Uses and Gratification theory (Katz 1959), which explains various reasons why people choose media types and their motivations for using the different types of media. Current theory suggests that High Sensation Seekers (HSS), due to their needs for novelty, arousal and unconventional content and imagery, would exhibit higher frequency of use of new media. Specifically, we hypothesize that HSS will use the internet more than broadcast (H1a) or print media (H1b) and more than low (LSS) (H2a) or medium sensation seekers (MSS) (H2b). In addition, HSS have been found to be more social and have higher numbers of friends therefore are expected to use social networking websites such as Facebook/MySpace (H3) and chat rooms (H4) more than LSS (a) and MSS (b). Sensation seekers can manifest into a range of behaviors including disinhibition,. It is expected that alternative social networks such as Facebook/MySpace (H5) and chat rooms (H6) will be used more often for those who have higher levels of disinhibition than low (a) or medium (b) levels. Data were collected using an online survey of participants in extreme sports. In order to reach this group, an improved version of a snowball sampling technique, chain-referral method, was used to select respondents for this study. This method was chosen as it is regarded as being effective to reach otherwise hidden population groups (Heckathorn, 1997). A final usable sample of 1108 respondents, which was mainly young (56.36% under 34), male (86.1%) and middle class (58.7% with household incomes over USD 50,000) was consistent with previous studies on sensation seeking. Sensation seeking was captured using an existing measure, the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (Hoyle et al., 2002). Media usage was captured by measuring the self reported usage of various media types. Results did not support H1a and b. HSS did not show higher levels of usage of alternative media such as the internet showing in fact lower mean levels of usage than all the other types of media. The highest media type used by HSS was print media, suggesting that there is a revolt against the mainstream. Results support H2a and b that HSS are more frequent users of the internet than LSS or MSS. Further analysis revealed that there are significant differences in the use of print media between HSS and LSS, suggesting that HSS may seek out more specialized print publications in their respective extreme sport activity. Hypothesis 3a and b showed that HSS use Facebook/MySpace more frequently than either LSS or MSS. There were no significant differences in the use of chat rooms between LSS and HSS, so as a consequence no support for H4a, although significant for MSS H4b. Respondents with varying levels of disinhibition were expected to have different levels of use of Facebook/MySpace and chat-rooms. There was support for the higher levels of use of Facebook/MySpace for those with high levels of disinhibition than low or medium levels, supporting H5a and b. Similarly there was support for H6b, Those with high levels of disinhibition use chat-rooms significantly more than those with medium levels but not for low levels (H6a). The findings are counterintuitive and give some interesting insights for managers. First, although HSS use online media more frequently than LSS or MSS, this groups use of online media is less than either print or broadcast media. The advertising executive should not place too much emphasis on online media for this important market segment. Second, social media, such as facebook/Myspace and chatrooms should be examined by managers as potential ways to reach this group. Finally, there is some implication for public policy by the higher levels of use of social media by those who are disinhibited. These individuals are more inclined to engage in more socially risky behavior which may have some dire implications, e.g. by internet predators or future employers. There is a limitation in the study in that only those who engage in extreme sports are included. This is by nature a HSS activity. A broader population is therefore needed to test if these results hold.