• Title/Summary/Keyword: Performance Facilities

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Towards Efficient Aquaculture Monitoring: Ground-Based Camera Implementation for Real-Time Fish Detection and Tracking with YOLOv7 and SORT (효율적인 양식 모니터링을 향하여: YOLOv7 및 SORT를 사용한 실시간 물고기 감지 및 추적을 위한 지상 기반 카메라 구현)

  • TaeKyoung Roh;Sang-Hyun Ha;KiHwan Kim;Young-Jin Kang;Seok Chan Jeong
    • The Journal of Bigdata
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.73-82
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    • 2023
  • With 78% of current fisheries workers being elderly, there's a pressing need to address labor shortages. Consequently, active research on smart aquaculture technologies, centered on object detection and tracking algorithms, is underway. These technologies allow for fish size analysis and behavior pattern forecasting, facilitating the development of real-time monitoring and automated systems. Our study utilized video data from cameras outside aquaculture facilities and implemented fish detection and tracking algorithms. We aimed to tackle high maintenance costs due to underwater conditions and camera corrosion from ammonia and pH levels. We evaluated the performance of a real-time system using YOLOv7 for fish detection and the SORT algorithm for movement tracking. YOLOv7 results demonstrated a trade-off between Recall and Precision, minimizing false detections from lighting, water currents, and shadows. Effective tracking was ascertained through re-identification. This research holds promise for enhancing smart aquaculture's operational efficiency and improving fishery facility management.

A Study on People Counting in Public Metro Service using Hybrid CNN-LSTM Algorithm (Hybrid CNN-LSTM 알고리즘을 활용한 도시철도 내 피플 카운팅 연구)

  • Choi, Ji-Hye;Kim, Min-Seung;Lee, Chan-Ho;Choi, Jung-Hwan;Lee, Jeong-Hee;Sung, Tae-Eung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.26 no.2
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    • pp.131-145
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    • 2020
  • In line with the trend of industrial innovation, IoT technology utilized in a variety of fields is emerging as a key element in creation of new business models and the provision of user-friendly services through the combination of big data. The accumulated data from devices with the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is being used in many ways to build a convenience-based smart system as it can provide customized intelligent systems through user environment and pattern analysis. Recently, it has been applied to innovation in the public domain and has been using it for smart city and smart transportation, such as solving traffic and crime problems using CCTV. In particular, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the easiness of securing real-time service data and the stability of security when planning underground services or establishing movement amount control information system to enhance citizens' or commuters' convenience in circumstances with the congestion of public transportation such as subways, urban railways, etc. However, previous studies that utilize image data have limitations in reducing the performance of object detection under private issue and abnormal conditions. The IoT device-based sensor data used in this study is free from private issue because it does not require identification for individuals, and can be effectively utilized to build intelligent public services for unspecified people. Especially, sensor data stored by the IoT device need not be identified to an individual, and can be effectively utilized for constructing intelligent public services for many and unspecified people as data free form private issue. We utilize the IoT-based infrared sensor devices for an intelligent pedestrian tracking system in metro service which many people use on a daily basis and temperature data measured by sensors are therein transmitted in real time. The experimental environment for collecting data detected in real time from sensors was established for the equally-spaced midpoints of 4×4 upper parts in the ceiling of subway entrances where the actual movement amount of passengers is high, and it measured the temperature change for objects entering and leaving the detection spots. The measured data have gone through a preprocessing in which the reference values for 16 different areas are set and the difference values between the temperatures in 16 distinct areas and their reference values per unit of time are calculated. This corresponds to the methodology that maximizes movement within the detection area. In addition, the size of the data was increased by 10 times in order to more sensitively reflect the difference in temperature by area. For example, if the temperature data collected from the sensor at a given time were 28.5℃, the data analysis was conducted by changing the value to 285. As above, the data collected from sensors have the characteristics of time series data and image data with 4×4 resolution. Reflecting the characteristics of the measured, preprocessed data, we finally propose a hybrid algorithm that combines CNN in superior performance for image classification and LSTM, especially suitable for analyzing time series data, as referred to CNN-LSTM (Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short Term Memory). In the study, the CNN-LSTM algorithm is used to predict the number of passing persons in one of 4×4 detection areas. We verified the validation of the proposed model by taking performance comparison with other artificial intelligence algorithms such as Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and RNN-LSTM (Recurrent Neural Network-Long Short Term Memory). As a result of the experiment, proposed CNN-LSTM hybrid model compared to MLP, LSTM and RNN-LSTM has the best predictive performance. By utilizing the proposed devices and models, it is expected various metro services will be provided with no illegal issue about the personal information such as real-time monitoring of public transport facilities and emergency situation response services on the basis of congestion. However, the data have been collected by selecting one side of the entrances as the subject of analysis, and the data collected for a short period of time have been applied to the prediction. There exists the limitation that the verification of application in other environments needs to be carried out. In the future, it is expected that more reliability will be provided for the proposed model if experimental data is sufficiently collected in various environments or if learning data is further configured by measuring data in other sensors.

The Effect of the Quality of Education Service on the Performance of Education Service through Relationship Commitment in Franchise Beauty Academy: Moderating Effect of Trust Level (프랜차이즈 뷰티 아카데미의 교육서비스 품질이 관계 몰입을 통한 교육 서비스 성과에 미치는 영향 연구: 신뢰 수준의 조절효과)

  • Kim, Chang-Bong;Kim, Hee-Su
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.193-211
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    • 2021
  • Recently, interest in Korean Wave craze and K-beauty, led by K-pop, is increasing. In addition, the popularity and influence of the domestic beauty service industry has increased, and the economic and cultural ripple effects have been continuously expanding. The need to professional manpower training in response to the demand for manpower due to the growing development of domestic beauty services is emphasized, and the number of trainees who are actual consumers of beauty academy is increasing. Therefore, the purpose of our study is to examine the importance of quality factors of educational services to achieve educational purposes in the educational services provided by the Beauty Academy and the relationship between relationship commitment and educational service performance. Furthermore, it is to draw the importance of administrative support services, educational programs as well as educational service provision activities. However, the research for professional manpower training according to the provision of beauty services is insufficient compared to the development speed of the beauty industry. Therefore, at the present time when beauty service education is emphasized, our study will examine the relationship between relationship commitment and educational service performance based on the quality of education service by the students of domestic beauty academy. The measurement variables set for our study are program, instructor quality, tuition, external service, service fairness, relationship commitment, trust level, and educational service performance. The variables were analyzed and derived through the survey, and the following contents were derived from the empirical analysis. First, the quality of education service provided by the beauty academy, such as program, external service, service fairness, relationship commitment and trust level, had a significant effect on relationship commitment. Educational services provided by the institute, such as the systematicity and diversity of educational programs, enabled students to have a uniform relationship commitment. The quality of education service itself is to learn the expertise necessary for providing beauty service from the standpoint of the students and play an organic role in the relationship with the institute. Second, the moderating effect of trust level between academies and students was significant in the quality of education service and the relationship commitment. This means that students will feel higher level of service quality through the practical trust relationship of the students about the educational services provided by the institute. Based on the results of the empirical analysis, the implications of our study are to find ways to improve the students' ability and satisfaction represented by the results of educational services. This is because the quality of education services provided by the institute called Beauty Academy will have a great impact on the career choice of educational facilities and students. The characteristics of consistency, convenience, and knowledge orientation of education itself should be considered comprehensively, and a strong market position should be established through image formation through external service factors, which are external environments of academies.Furthermore, in terms of presenting differentiated strategies with competitors, the educational service quality factors play a significant role in the commitment to the relationship with the students, so the role of relationship marketing will be important for the psychological stability experienced by the students by grasping the demand accompanying the behavior of the students in advance.

Performance Test of Portable Hand-Held HPGe Detector Prototype for Safeguard Inspection (안전조치 사찰을 위한 휴대형 HPGe 검출기 시제품 성능평가 실험)

  • Kwak, Sung-Woo;Ahn, Gil Hoon;Park, Iljin;Ham, Young Soo;Dreyer, Jonathan
    • Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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    • v.39 no.1
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    • pp.54-60
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    • 2014
  • IAEA has employed various types of radiation detectors - HPGe, NaI, CZT - for accountancy of nuclear material. Among them, HPGe has been mainly used in verification activities required for high accuracy. Due to its essential cooling component(a liquid-nitrogen cooling or a mechanical cooling system), it is large and heavy and needs long cooling time before use. New hand-held portable HPGe has been developed to address such problems. This paper deals with results of performance evaluation test of the new hand-held portable HPGe prototype which was used during IAEA's inspection activities. Radioactive spectra obtained with the new portable HPGe showed different characteristics depending on types and enrichments of nuclear materials inspected. Also, Gamma-rays from daughter radioisotopes in the decay series of $^{235}U$ and $^{238}U$ and characteristic x-rays from uranium were able to be remarkably separated from other peaks in the spectra. A relative error of enrichment measured by the new portable HPGe was in the range of 9 to 27%. The enrichment measurement results didn't meet partially requirement of IAEA because of a small size of a radiation sensing material. This problem might be solved through a further study. This paper discusses how to determine enrichment of nuclear material as well as how to apply the new hand-held portable HPGe to safeguard inspection. There have been few papers to deal with IAEA inspection activity in Korea to verify accountancy of nuclear material in national nuclear facilities. This paper would contribute to analyzing results of safeguards inspection. Also, it is expected that things discussed about further improvement of a radiation detector would make contribution to development of a radiation detector in the related field.

The Application of Operations Research to Librarianship : Some Research Directions (운영연구(OR)의 도서관응용 -그 몇가지 잠재적응용분야에 대하여-)

  • Choi Sung Jin
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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    • v.4
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    • pp.43-71
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    • 1975
  • Operations research has developed rapidly since its origins in World War II. Practitioners of O. R. have contributed to almost every aspect of government and business. More recently, a number of operations researchers have turned their attention to library and information systems, and the author believes that significant research has resulted. It is the purpose of this essay to introduce the library audience to some of these accomplishments, to present some of the author's hypotheses on the subject of library management to which he belives O. R. has great potential, and to suggest some future research directions. Some problem areas in librianship where O. R. may play a part have been discussed and are summarized below. (1) Library location. It is usually necessary to make balance between accessibility and cost In location problems. Many mathematical methods are available for identifying the optimal locations once the balance between these two criteria has been decided. The major difficulties lie in relating cost to size and in taking future change into account when discriminating possible solutions. (2) Planning new facilities. Standard approaches to using mathematical models for simple investment decisions are well established. If the problem is one of choosing the most economical way of achieving a certain objective, one may compare th althenatives by using one of the discounted cash flow techniques. In other situations it may be necessary to use of cost-benefit approach. (3) Allocating library resources. In order to allocate the resources to best advantage the librarian needs to know how the effectiveness of the services he offers depends on the way he puts his resources. The O. R. approach to the problems is to construct a model representing effectiveness as a mathematical function of levels of different inputs(e.g., numbers of people in different jobs, acquisitions of different types, physical resources). (4) Long term planning. Resource allocation problems are generally concerned with up to one and a half years ahead. The longer term certainly offers both greater freedom of action and greater uncertainty. Thus it is difficult to generalize about long term planning problems. In other fields, however, O. R. has made a significant contribution to long range planning and it is likely to have one to make in librarianship as well. (5) Public relations. It is generally accepted that actual and potential users are too ignorant both of the range of library services provided and of how to make use of them. How should services be brought to the attention of potential users? The answer seems to lie in obtaining empirical evidence by controlled experiments in which a group of libraries participated. (6) Acquisition policy. In comparing alternative policies for acquisition of materials one needs to know the implications of each service which depends on the stock. Second is the relative importance to be ascribed to each service for each class of user. By reducing the level of the first, formal models will allow the librarian to concentrate his attention upon the value judgements which will be necessary for the second. (7) Loan policy. The approach to choosing between loan policies is much the same as the previous approach. (8) Manpower planning. For large library systems one should consider constructing models which will permit the skills necessary in the future with predictions of the skills that will be available, so as to allow informed decisions. (9) Management information system for libraries. A great deal of data can be available in libraries as a by-product of all recording activities. It is particularly tempting when procedures are computerized to make summary statistics available as a management information system. The values of information to particular decisions that may have to be taken future is best assessed in terms of a model of the relevant problem. (10) Management gaming. One of the most common uses of a management game is as a means of developing staff's to take decisions. The value of such exercises depends upon the validity of the computerized model. If the model were sufficiently simple to take the form of a mathematical equation, decision-makers would probably able to learn adequately from a graph. More complex situations require simulation models. (11) Diagnostics tools. Libraries are sufficiently complex systems that it would be useful to have available simple means of telling whether performance could be regarded as satisfactory which, if it could not, would also provide pointers to what was wrong. (12) Data banks. It would appear to be worth considering establishing a bank for certain types of data. It certain items on questionnaires were to take a standard form, a greater pool of data would de available for various analysis. (13) Effectiveness measures. The meaning of a library performance measure is not readily interpreted. Each measure must itself be assessed in relation to the corresponding measures for earlier periods of time and a standard measure that may be a corresponding measure in another library, the 'norm', the 'best practice', or user expectations.

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The Efficiency Analysis of CRM System in the Hotel Industry Using DEA (DEA를 이용한 호텔 관광 서비스 업계의 CRM 도입 효율성 분석)

  • Kim, Tai-Young;Seol, Kyung-Jin;Kwak, Young-Dai
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.91-110
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    • 2011
  • This paper analyzes the cases where the hotels have increased their services and enhanced their work process through IT solutions to cope with computerization globalization. Also the cases have been studies where national hotels use the CRM solution internally to respond effectively to customers requests, increase customer analysis, and build marketing strategies. In particular, this study discusses the introduction of the CRM solutions and CRM sales business and marketing services using a process for utilizing the presumed, CRM by introducing effective DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis). First, the comparison has done regarding the relative efficiency of L Company with the CCR model, then compared L Company's restaurants and facilities' effectiveness through BCC model. L Company reached a conclusion that it is important to precisely create and manage sales data which are the preliminary data for CRM, and for that reason it made it possible to save sales data generated by POS system on each sales performance database. In order to do that, it newly established Oracle POS system and LORIS POS system concerned with restaurants for food and beverage as well as rooms, and made it possible to stably generate and manage sales data and manage. Moreover, it set up a composite database to control comprehensively the results of work processes during a specific period by collecting customer registration information and made it possible to systematically control the information on sales performances. By establishing a system which unifies database and managing it comprehensively, impeccability of data has been greatly enhanced and a problem which generated asymmetric data could be thoroughly solved. Using data accumulated on the comprehensive database, sales data can be analyzed, categorized, classified through data mining engine imbedded in Polaris CRM and the results can be organized on data mart to provide them in the form of CRM application data. By transforming original sales data into forms which are easy to handle and saving them on data mart separately, it enabled acquiring well-organized data with ease when engaging in various marketing operations, holding a morning meeting and working on decision-making. By using summarized data at data mart, it was possible to process marketing operations such as telemarketing, direct mailing, internet marketing service and service product developments for perceived customers; moreover, information on customer perceptions which is one of CRM's end-products could feed back into the comprehensive database. This research was undertaken to find out how effectively CRM has been employed by comparing and analyzing the management performance of each enterprise site and store after introducing CRM to Hotel enterprises using DEA technique. According to the research results, efficiency evaluation for each site was calculated through input and output factors to find out comparative CRM system usage efficiency of L's Company four sites; moreover, with regard to stores, the sizes of workforce and budget application show a huge difference and so does the each store efficiency. Furthermore, by using the DEA technique, it could assess which sites have comparatively high efficiency and which don't by comparing and evaluating hotel enterprises IT project outcomes such as CRM introduction using the CCR model for each site of the related enterprises. By using the BCC model, it could comparatively evaluate the outcome of CRM usage at each store of A site, which is representative of L Company, and as a result, it could figure out which stores maintain high efficiency in using CRM and which don't. It analyzed the cases of CRM introduction at L Company, which is a hotel enterprise, and precisely evaluated them through DEA. L Company analyzed the customer analysis system by introducing CRM and achieved to provide customers identified through client analysis data with one to one tailored services. Moreover, it could come up with a plan to differentiate the service for customers who revisit by assessing customer discernment rate. As tasks to be solved in the future, it is required to do research on the process analysis which can lead to a specific outcome such as increased sales volumes by carrying on test marketing, target marketing using CRM. Furthermore, it is also necessary to do research on efficiency evaluation in accordance with linkages between other IT solutions such as ERP and CRM system.

A Hybrid Forecasting Framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Artificial Neural Network (사례기반 추론기법과 인공신경망을 이용한 서비스 수요예측 프레임워크)

  • Hwang, Yousub
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.43-57
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    • 2012
  • To enhance the competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, an enterprise management must make the right decision in many business activities based on both internal and external information. Thus, providing accurate information plays a prominent role in management's decision making. Intuitively, historical data can provide a feasible estimate through the forecasting models. Therefore, if the service department can estimate the service quantity for the next period, the service department can then effectively control the inventory of service related resources such as human, parts, and other facilities. In addition, the production department can make load map for improving its product quality. Therefore, obtaining an accurate service forecast most likely appears to be critical to manufacturing companies. Numerous investigations addressing this problem have generally employed statistical methods, such as regression or autoregressive and moving average simulation. However, these methods are only efficient for data with are seasonal or cyclical. If the data are influenced by the special characteristics of product, they are not feasible. In our research, we propose a forecasting framework that predicts service demand of manufacturing organization by combining Case-based reasoning (CBR) and leveraging an unsupervised artificial neural network based clustering analysis (i.e., Self-Organizing Maps; SOM). We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying unsupervised artificial neural network-based machine-learning techniques in the service forecasting domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) We applied CBR and SOM in a new forecasting domain such as service demand forecasting. (2) We proposed our combined approach between CBR and SOM in order to overcome limitations of traditional statistical forecasting methods and We have developed a service forecasting tool based on the proposed approach using an unsupervised artificial neural network and Case-based reasoning. In this research, we conducted an empirical study on a real digital TV manufacturer (i.e., Company A). In addition, we have empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real sales and service related data from digital TV manufacturer. In our empirical experiments, we intend to explore the performance of our proposed service forecasting framework when compared to the performances predicted by other two service forecasting methods; one is traditional CBR based forecasting model and the other is the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. We ran each service forecasting 144 times; each time, input data were randomly sampled for each service forecasting framework. To evaluate accuracy of forecasting results, we used Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) as primary performance measure in our experiments. We conducted one-way ANOVA test with the 144 measurements of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches. For example, the F-ratio of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches is 67.25 and the p-value is 0.000. This means that the difference between the MAPE of the three different service forecasting approaches is significant at the level of 0.000. Since there is a significant difference among the different service forecasting approaches, we conducted Tukey's HSD post hoc test to determine exactly which means of MAPE are significantly different from which other ones. In terms of MAPE, Tukey's HSD post hoc test grouped the three different service forecasting approaches into three different subsets in the following order: our proposed approach > traditional CBR-based service forecasting approach > the existing forecasting approach used by Company A. Consequently, our empirical experiments show that our proposed approach outperformed the traditional CBR based forecasting model and the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some research background information such as summary of CBR and SOM. Section 3 presents a hybrid service forecasting framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Self-Organizing Maps, while the empirical evaluation results are summarized in Section 4. Conclusion and future research directions are finally discussed in Section 5.

Study on Recognition Attitudes of Residents on Safety Management against Disasters of Local Governments: Focused on Chungcheongbuk-do (지방자치단체의 재난안전 관리에 대한 주민 인식태도 연구 - 충청북도 지역을 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Sang-Yeol;Nam, Jae-Sung
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.58
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    • pp.81-106
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    • 2019
  • This study analyzed safety management system against disasters perceived by local residents of Chungcheongbuk-do and then examined the policy directions to be considered in order for local governments to improve the safety level of residents and build an effective safety management system against disasters. The findings were as follows. First, in their recognition of risks of safety against disasters, recognition on the possibility of the occurrence of natural disasters was higher than that of social disasters or safety accidents. Secondly, also in the aspect of the importance of category of safety management against disasters, they recognized that of natural disasters far higher than others. Third, they showed satisfaction higher than average with basic job performance of local governments related with safety management, whereas they showed relatively less satisfaction with the aspects of check and publicity of risk factors, and short-term restoration system out of phased job performance. Fourth, in the aspect of capability of local governments for safety management against disasters, they rated positively capability of the responsible departments and the professionality, whereas they relatively underestimated the scale or budget of safety-related organizations. Fifth, the policy directions to be taken for safety against disasters by local governments included strengthening of regular education like experience-based training, expansion of education among local residents, more support for relevant facilities and resources, activation of residents-participating campaigns, improvement of apparatus and personnel treatment related with firefighting and security, frequent patrol and oversight, more exercises against disasters. So, to strengthen safety management system against disasters in local governments and build a effective responding system may need to extend programs assisting vulnerable class to safety against disasters, build a community-friendly safety management system, extend the cooperation system by participation of residents, enhance collaboration and support system with safety-related bodies like police, firefighters.

Performance Measurement of Diagnostic X Ray System (진단용 X선 발생장치의 성능 측정)

  • You, Ingyu;Lim, Cheonghwan;Lee, Sangho;Lee, Mankoo
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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    • v.6 no.6
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    • pp.447-454
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    • 2012
  • To examine the performance of a diagnostic X-ray system, we tested a linearity, reproducibility, and Half Value Layer(HVL). The linearity was examined 4 times of irradiation with a given condition, and we recorded a level of radiation. We then calculated the mR/mAs. And the measured value should not be more than 0.1. If the measured value was more than 0.1, we could know that the linearity was decreased. The reproducibility was analyzed 10 times of irradiations at 80kVp, 200mA, 20mAs and 120kVp, 300mA, 8mAs. The values from these analyses were integrated into CV equation, and we could get outputs. The reproducibility was good if the output was lower than 0.05. HVL was measured 3 times of irradiation without a filter, and we inserted additional HLV filters with 0, 1, 2, 4 mm of thickness. We tested the values until we get the measured value less than a half of the value measured without additional filter. We tested the linearity, the reproducibility, and HVL of 5 diagnostic X-ray generators in this facilities. The linearity of No. 1 and No. 5 generator didn't satisfy the standard for radiation safety around 300mA~400mA and 100mA~200mA, respectively. HVL of No.1 generator was not satisfied at 80kVp. The outputs were higher in the three-phase equipment than the single-phase equipment. The old generators need to maintain and exchange of components based on the these results. Then, we could contribute to getting more exact diagnosis increasing a quality of the image and decreasing an expose dose of radiation.

Analysis on the Labor Market Performance of Local University Graduates and Regional Education Gap (지방대학 졸업자의 노동시장 성과와 지역별 교육격차)

  • Kim, Hisam
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.32 no.2
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    • pp.55-92
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    • 2010
  • In terms of labor market accomplishments, such as income, size of the company, and the matching quality between one's job and college major (specialization), a very large discrepancy is observed between the graduates from colleges located in Seoul and those outside Seoul. But, when the department average score of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) at the time of college entrance is controlled for, the discrepancy is found to be reduced to a considerable degree. In the case of wage gap, at least two third can be explained by the SAT score gap. The remaining wage gap seems to reflect the characteristics of workplace. In other words, graduates with high SAT scores enter colleges located in Seoul and thus tend to find better jobs leading to earning differences. This result that confirms the importance of aptitude test scores suggests that in the labor market, one of the major reasons behind a lower accomplishment of the graduate from local colleges is due to a lower competitiveness of local colleges in attracting the brightest students. But, this should not be viewed as only an internal problem of local colleges. This is because the growth of local economies tends to haul the advancement of local colleges in that area rather than being the other way around. The agglomeration effect in Seoul where headquarters of large corporations and financial institutions gather is the factor that has elevated the status of colleges located in Seoul since this provides highly preferred job choices of graduates. When the competitiveness of college is significantly influenced by exogenous factors, such as the vicinity to Seoul, the effort being made by colleges alone would not be enough to improve the situation. However, the central government, too, is not in the position to carry out countermeasure policies for such problems. The regional development strategy boosted through supportive policies for local colleges, such as financial support, is not based on the persuasive and empirical grounds. It is true that college education is universal and that the government''s intervention in assisting local colleges to secure basic conditions, such as tenure faculty and adequate facilities is necessary. However, the way of intervention should not be a support-only type. In order to improve the efficiency and effect of financial support, restructuring programs, including the merger and integration of insolvent colleges, should be underway prior to providing support. In addition, when the policy is focused on education recipients-local college students, and not on education providers-local colleges, the importance of regional gap in compulsory education (elementary and junior high schools) turns out to be much important as the gap between metropolitan area colleges and local colleges. Considering the educational gap before college entrance shown from the discrepancies of aptitude test scores among different regions, the imbalance between regions in terms of human resources is apparently derived from compulsory education, and not from college education. Therefore, there is a need to double the policy efforts to reduce the educational gap among different regions. In addition, given the current situation where it is difficult to find appropriate ex post facto policy measures to solve the problem of income gap between the graduates from metropolitan colleges and local colleges, it can be said that improving the environment for compulsory education in local areas is a growing necessity for bridging the educational gap among different regions.

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