• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.51-72
• /
• 2010

Given the extensive role of IS in everyday life and the increasing presence of women in IS users, understanding gender differences in individual technology continuance usage decisions is an important issue. Nevertheless, much of the large body of research on gender differences has just examined mean differences between women and men in terms of abilities, usage habit, and traits. Even though lots of psychology studies have shown that women, more than men, were influenced by affective factors, gender-affection-continuance use linkage has not been examined in the context of on-line shopping services. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to seek to examine gender differences in terms of influence of affective factor in the context of IS continuance use. Meanwhile, IS continuance has been an important subject of study in the IT research area. To date, to explain why and how users are motivated to continue to use on-line shopping services, lots of theory-based research such as expectation-confirmation model (ECM) has been proposed. In particular, various affective factors have been proposed to explain continuance use of on-line shopping services recently. Affective factors have been regarded as essential factors for increasing relational strength and satisfaction. Several affective factors have been studied by prior IS adoption and continuance studies. Among them are enjoyment and anxiety. In IS continuance research, positive affect has been commonly and narrowly conceptualized and measured as the enjoyment which a person derives from using computers. Hence, in this study, we introduced intimacy factor, which was conceptually related to the quality of interactions and relationships in previous research. It also has been regarded as essential factors for strengthening human relationships. As a result, we have observed gender effect while examining intimacy-continuance bond. As expected based on the previous literatures, women seem to be more sensitive in affective factors. The contribution point here is that we find evidence in the context of on-line shopping services.

• Journal of Rheumatic Diseases
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.227-235
• /
• 2017

Objective. Failure of first-line anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents in in rheumatoid arthritis patients leads to decisions among second-line biologic agents. To better inform these decisions, the therapeutic effectiveness of rituximab is compared with other second-line biologic agents in this observational study. Methods. Between November 2011 and December 2014, study subjects were observed for 12 month periods. Patients with an inadequate response to initial anti-TNF agent received either rituximab or alternative anti-TNF agents (adalimumab/etanercept/infliximab) based on the preference of patients and physicians. The efficacy end point of this study was the change in 28-joint count Disease Activity Score (DAS28) at six and 12 months from baseline. Safety data were also collected. Results. Ninety patients were enrolled in the study. DAS28 at six months did not change significantly whether the patients were treated with rituximab or alternative anti-TNF agents in intention-to-treat analysis (n=34, $-1.63{\pm}0.30$ vs. n=31, $-2.05{\pm}0.34$) and standard population set analysis (n=31, $-1.51{\pm}0.29$ vs. n=24, $-2.21{\pm}0.34$). Similarly, the change in DAS28 at 12 months did not reach statistical significance ($-1.82{\pm}0.35$ in the rituximab vs. $-2.34{\pm}0.44$ in the alternative anti-TNF agents, p=0.2390). Furthermore, the incidences of adverse events were similar between two groups (23.5% for rituximab group vs. 25.8% for alternative anti-TNF agents group, p=0.7851). Conclusion. Despite the limitations of our study, switching to rituximab or alternative anti-TNF agents after failure of the initial TNF antagonist showed no significant therapeutic difference in DAS28 reduction.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.125-134
• /
• 2004

The new deregulated economic environment in the power utility market is forcing fundamental changes in the investment and operational decisions regarding transmission lines. Hence, it has come to be an important issue to evaluate their current utility in order to increase conductor ampacity based on conservative assumptions of worst case weather conditions. Static thermal rating has born still applied in most power companies worldwide, however some of them have been done various trials such as monitoring dynamic line ratings to increase line ratings in real time. This study is an attempt to access the static line ratings in Korea Electric Power Corporation(KEPCO) transmission lines, which were specified by weather model. Several environmental performances for determining static line ratings are examined by using the past weather data of Korean Meteorological Administration. As a result, it is shown that seasonal or regional line ratings could be adopt to the KEPCO's transmission lines, and their line ratings could be more increased without refurbishing current conductors in service to new high-temperature ones.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.799-805
• /
• 2016

Background: There is no standard treatment for patients with platinum-resistant or refractory epithelial ovarian cancer. Single agent chemotherapies have evidence of more efficacy and less toxicity than combination therapy. Most are very expensive, with appreciable toxicity and minimal survival. Since it is difficult to make comparison between outcomes, economic analysis of single-agent chemotherapy regimens and best supportive care may help to make decisions about an appropriate management for the affected patients. Objective: To evaluate the cost effectiveness of second-line chemotherapy compared with best supportive care for patients with platinum-resistant or refractory epithelial ovarian cancer. Materials and Methods: A Markov model was used to estimate the effectiveness and total costs associated with treatments. The hypothetical patient population comprised women aged 55 with platinum-resistant or refractory epithelial ovarian cancer. Four types of alternative treatment options were evaluated: 1) gemcitabine followed by BSC; 2) pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) followed by BSC; 3) gemcitabine followed by topotecan; and 4) PLD followed by topotecan. Baseline comparator of alternative treatments was BSC. Time horizon of the analysis was 2 years. Health care provider perspective and 3% discount rate were used to determine the costs of medical treatment in this study. Quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) were used to measure the treatment effectiveness. Treatment effectiveness data were derived from the literature. Costs were calculated from unit cost treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer patients at various stages of disease in King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (KCMH) in the year 2011. Parameter uncertainty was tested in probabilistic sensitivity analysis by using Monte Carlo simulation. One-way sensitivity analysis was used to explore each variable's impact on the uncertainty of the results. Results: Approximated life expectancy of best supportive care was 0.182 years and its total cost was 26,862 Baht. All four alternative treatments increased life expectancy. Life expectancy of gemcitabine followed by BSC, PLD followed by BSC, gemcitabine followed by topotecan and PLD followed by topotecan was 0.510, 0.513, 0.566, and 0.570 years, respectively. The total cost of gemcitabine followed by BSC, PLD followed by BSC, gemcitabine followed by topotecan and PLD followed by topotecan was 113,000, 124,302, 139,788 and 151,135 Baht, respectively. PLD followed by topotecan had the highest expected quality-adjusted life-years but was the most expensive of all the above strategies. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) of gemcitabine followed by BSC, PLD followed by BSC, gemcitabine followed by topotecan and PLD followed by topotecan was 344,643, 385,322, 385,856, and 420,299 Baht, respectively. Conclusions: All of the second-line chemotherapy strategies showed certain benefits due to an increased life-year gained compared with best supportive care. Moreover, gemcitabine as second-line chemotherapy followed by best supportive care in progressive disease case was likely to be more effective strategy with less cost from health care provider perspective. Gemcitabine was the most cost-effective treatment among all four alternative treatments. ICER is only an economic factor. Treatment decisions should be based on the patient benefit.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.19-33
• /
• 2009

With the continuously increasing volume of e-commerce transactions, it is now popular to buy some products and to evaluate them on the World Wide Web. The product reviews are very useful to customers because they can make better decisions based on the indirect experiences obtainable through the reviews. Product Reviews are results expressing customer's sentiments and thus are divided into positive reviews and negative ones. However, as the number of reviews in on-line shopping increases, it is inefficient or sometimes impossible for users to read all the relevant review documents. In this paper, we present a sentiment analysis algorithm for automatically classifying subjective opinions of customer's reviews using opinion mining technology. The proposed algorithm is to focus on product reviews of on-line shopping, and provides summarized results from large product review data by determining whether they are positive or negative. Additionally, this paper introduces an automatic review analysis system implemented based on the proposed algorithm, and also present the experiment results for verifying the efficiency of the algorithm.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.143-158
• /
• 2014

Making decisions on prices must be an important task for sellers to stay competitive in on-line markets. Because the emergence of price-comparison web sites led buyers to be more sensitive to the prices, adjusting prices became very important to on-line sellers. This study collected and analyzed the data of prices on computing peripheral devices posted at a popular web site that enabled buyers to compare the prices on the same products. By analyzing the timings of price adjustments among different sellers using Monte Carlo simulation, we explored the possibility of price coordinations among those sellers. The results indicated that online sellers adjusted their prices on a daily basis rather than a weekly basis and the tacit coordination on the price changes was identified.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.41 no.4
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2016

In response to the government's recent attempts to introduce competition and efficiency criteria in the rural railway service provision, this study is to empirically estimate public service values on continuous operation of two rural railways-Young Dong Line (YDL) and Donghae Nambu Line (DNL)-that will be realized beyond the passengers' use values. Based on a contingent valuation survey conducted on 600 passengers and local residents, YDL respondents were willing to pay significantly higher amount compared to those of DNL respondents. Especially tourists traveling on YDL were willing to pay the highest amount, and local residents of DNL were willing to pay relatively high amount. The results will provide useful information in makings decisions on the selection of PSO railways, the amount of PSO compensation and which railways to close, so on.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.12 no.12
• /
• pp.1215-1219
• /
• 2006

Scheduling plays an important role in the process management in terms of providing profit-maximizing operation sequence of multiple orders and estimating completion times of them. In order to takes its full potential, varying conditions should be properly reflected in computing the schedule. The adjustment of scheduling decisions has to be made frequently in response to the occurrence of variations. It is often challenging because their model has to be adjusted and their solutions have to be computed within short time period. This paper employs Model Predictive Control(MPC) principles for updating the process condition in the scheduling model. The solutions of the resulting problems considering variations are computed using parametric programming techniques. The key advantage of the proposed framework is that repetition of solving similar programming problems with decreasing dimensionis avoided and all potential schedules are obtained before the execution of the actual processes. Therefore, the proposed framework contributes to constructing a robust decision-support tool in the face of varying environment. An example is solved to illustrate the potential of the proposed framework with remarks on potential wide applications.

• Journal of East Asia Management
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.63-92
• /
• 2021

Human activities have been putting a great burden on the earth, leading to many serious problems, such as lack of resources, ecological degradation and air degradation. Although many countries have recognised this circumstance and have developed some sustainable development strategies, the earth still needs research on sustainability in different views and various industries. The nursing industry has grown with the ageing of the global population in recent years, and professional nursing institutions could relieve structural deterioration caused by the ageing population in family, social, economic and cultural. Hence, exploring the key criteria of organisational sustainability in the nursing industry is of the utmost priority. This paper puts forward an evaluation framework to identify the key criteria of organisational sustainability. After connections with nursing homes A and B in China, the author adopts literature research to confirm the criteria system which is based on triple bottom line, utilises analytical network process method to design the network hierarchy analysis model and importance comparison questionnaires to collect experts' first-hand data, and uses technical software - Super Decisions to integrate data and obtain final results. The results recommend three top-ranked criteria in the entire system, eco-recruitment, eco-procurement and corporate social responsibility are discussed with some professional suggestions in the end. The limitations are also extended in the last chapter to provide future research perspectives.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartC
• /
• v.13C no.2 s.105
• /
• pp.171-176
• /
• 2006

Bandwidth is an extremely valuable and scarce resource in a wireless network. Therefore, efficient bandwidth management is necessary in order to provide high qualify service to users with different requirements in a multimedia wireless/mobile network. In this paper, we propose an on-line bandwidth reservation algorithm that adjusts bandwidth reservations adaptively based on existing network conditions. The most important contribution of our work is an adaptive algorithm that is able to resolve conflicting performance criteria - bandwidth utilization, call dropping and call blocking probabilities. Our algorithm is quite flexible, is responsive to current traffic conditions in cellular networks, and tries to strike the appropriate performance balance between contradictory requirements for QoS sensitive multimedia services.