• Journal of Information Management
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.20-30
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• 1999

Technology information as an economic good has several properties that would seem to cause difficulties for market transactions. There are several institutions used to over-come problems caused by the peculiar natures of information. The supply of information has exploded, thus bringing about the overload of information. We should be able to choose useful information. Production of technology information has externalities of public goods. Financial support is essential to the national service of technology information. The project should consider the properties of technology information and its market.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.87-107
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• 2006

A study of 117 Korean immigrant women who had husband and(or) children in Hawaii found the relation between social networks and psychological well-being. Social networks composed supporters, support structure, and support contents. Psychological well-being examined family life satisfaction, family life stability, and women's psychological health. Results showed as followed. First, the choice of immigration place among Korean immigrant women and her family based on other family members and friends lived in there. Second, her supporters were family and relatives, Korean friends, foreign friends, religions, belonged organizations and groups, public agencies in Hawaii, and mass-media. The best supporters of them was family and relatives and they mostly provided mental health to Korean immigrant women. Family, Korean friends, foreign friends, and religions tended to support emotional assistance. Third, the level of psychological well-being was higher. Her level of psychological health was higher than the others. Fourth, the best predictors of psychological well-being were child existence, occupation, and immigration duration. Fifth, psychological well-being significantly distinguished different relations of supporters from support structure of social network. The number and support duration with foreign friends supporter and the support duration and the level of perceived useful support content highly related with psychological well-being.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.183-193
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe cleaning workers' working experiences in Korea. Methods: The data were collected in two focus-group interviews with 9 cleaning workers. The phenomenological analytic method suggested by Colaizzi was used to analyze the data. Results: Five theme clusters and thirteen themes emerged from the analysis. The first theme clusters, 'Dead-end choice' included Limits of elderly women workers, Financial difficulties, Lowered self-esteem. The second theme clusters, 'Facing with discriminatory working environments' included Fear and unfair working conditions. The third theme clusters, 'Potential health problems' included Physical overload, Repeated exposure to hazardous substances and Emotional labor. The fourth theme clusters, 'Excluded from protection of the law' included Gloomy reality and Sexual harassment. The fifth theme clusters, 'Desire to get out of social isolation' included Efforts to maintain the status, Desire to live confidently and Desire to change social recognition. Conclusion: The findings of the study provide understanding on cleaning workers' working experiences to explain by their vision and language and should ensure proper working conditions and environment to live a better life.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2017

Considerable effort has been made to address the issue of occupational health and environmental exposure to mercury. This review reports on the current literature of mercury exposure and health impacts on dental personnel. Citations were searched using four comprehensive electronic databases for articles published between 2002 and 2015. All original articles that evaluated an association between the use of dental amalgam and occupational mercury exposure in dental personnel were included. Fifteen publications from nine different countries met the selection criteria. The design and quality of the studies showed significant variation, particularly in the choice of biomarkers as an indicator of mercury exposure. In several countries, dental personnel had higher mercury levels in biological fluids and tissues than in control groups; some work practices increased mercury exposure but the exposure levels remained below recommended guidelines. Dental personnel reported more health conditions, often involving the central nervous system, than the control groups. Clinical symptoms reported by dental professionals may be associated with low-level, long-term exposure to occupational mercury, but may also be due to the effects of aging, occupational overuse, and stress. It is important that dental personnel, researchers, and educators continue to encourage and monitor good work practices by dental professionals.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.24-29
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an efficient traffic light detection (TLD) method as an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) for elderly drivers. Since an increase in traffic accidents is associated with the aging population and an increase in elderly drivers causes a serious social problem, the provision of ADAS for older drivers via TLD is becoming a necessary(Ed: verify word choice: necessary?) public service. Therefore, we propose an economical TLD method that can be implemented with a simple black box (built in camera) and a smartphone in the near future. The system utilizes a color pre-processing method to differentiate between the stop and go signals. A mathematical morphology algorithm is used to further enhance the traffic light detection and a circular Hough transform is utilized to detect the traffic light correctly. From the simulation results of the computer vision and image processing based on a proposed algorithm on Matlab, we found that the proposed TLD method can detect the stop and go signals from the traffic lights not only in daytime, but also at night. In the future, it will be possible to reduce the traffic accident rate by recognizing the traffic signal and informing the elderly of how to drive by voice.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.67-76
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to estimate the economic value of official management and control for invasive insects and diseases in fruits. The direct and indirect effect of this control measure can be the changes in price of fruits and related goods, changes in export volume of domestic fruits, changes in total volume of fruit production, and reduce the risk in food safety. The contingent valuation method with the single-bounded dichotomous choice is employed to estimate each household's willingness-to-pay (WTP) to maintain official management and control measures. The total number of sample consists 2,050 respondents between the ages of 19-60 years, and the survey is conducted using Web-based survey. The estimated results for mean WTP is 5,443won per month per household. Therefore, the total economic value of official management and control on fruit in Korea is estimated to be approximately 94.4 billion won per month.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.198-202
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• 2014

Background: The economy is being lifted by the new concept of robotics, but we cannot be sure of all the possible benefits. At this early stage, it therefore becomes important to find out the possible benefits/limitations associated with robotics, so that the positives can be capitalized, established, and developed further for the employment and motivation of employees in the health care sector, for overall economic development. The negatives should also be further studied and mitigated. Methods: This study is an exploratory research, based on secondary data, such as books on topics related to robotics, websites, public websites of concerned departments for data and statistics, journals, newspapers and magazines, websites of health care providers, and different printed materials (brochures, etc). Results: The impact of robotics has both positive and negative impacts on the employment and motivation of employees in the retail sector. So far, there has been no substantial research done into robotics, especially in the health care sector. Conclusion: Replacing employees with robots is an inevitable choice for organizations in the service sector, more so in the health care sector because of the challenging and sometimes unhealthy working environments, but, at the same time, the researchers propose that it should be done in a manner that helps in improving the employment and motivation of employees in this sector.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.210-215
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• 2008

Gene-expression analysis is increasingly important in biological research, with real-time reverse PCR (RTPCR) becoming the method of choice for high-throughput and accurate expression profiling of selected genes. However, this technique requires important preliminary work for standardizing and optimizing the many parameters involved in the analysis. Plant stress studies are more and more based on gene expression. The analysis of gene expression requires sensitive and reproducible measurements for specific mRNA sequence. Several genes are regulated in response to abitoic stresses, such as salinity, and their gene products function in stress response and tolerance. The design of the primers and TaqMan probes for real-time PCR assays were carried out using the Primer $Express^{TM}$ software 3.0. The PCR efficiency was estimated through the linear regression of the dilution curve. To understand the expression pattern of various genes under salt stressed condition, we have developed a unique public resource of 9 stress-related genes in poplar. In this study, real-time RT-PCR was used to quantify the transcript level of 10 genes (9 stress-related genes and 1 house keeping gene) that could play a role in adaptation of Populus davidiana. Real-time RT-PCR analyses exhibited different expression ratios of related genes. The data obtained showed that determination of mRNA levels could constitute a new approach to study the stress response of P. davidiana after adaptation during growth in salinity condition.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2019

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate cancer patients' utilization of tertiary hospitals in Seoul before and after the benefit expansion policy implemented in 2013. Methods: This was a before-and-after study using claims data of the Korean National Health Insurance Service from 2011 to 2016. The unit of analysis was inpatient episodes, and inpatient episodes involving a malignant neoplasm (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision codes: C00-C97) were included in this study. The total sample (n=5 565 076) was divided into incident cases and prevalent cases according to medical use due to cancer in prior years. The tertiary hospitals in Seoul were divided into two groups (the five largest hospitals and the other tertiary hospitals in Seoul). Results: The proportions of the incident and prevalent episodes occurring in tertiary hospitals in Seoul were 34.9% and 37.2%, respectively, of which more than 70% occurred in the five largest hospitals in Seoul. Utilization of tertiary hospitals in Seoul was higher for inpatient episodes involving cancer surgery, patients with a higher income, patients living in areas close to Seoul, and patients living in areas without a metropolitan city. The utilization of the five largest hospitals increased by 2 percentage points after the policy went into effect. Conclusions: The utilization of tertiary hospitals in Seoul was concentrated among the five largest hospitals. Future research is necessary to identify the consequences of this utilization pattern.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.217-227
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• 2020

Purpose - Against the backdrop of the recent intense political conflict in Korea's political circles, it is to reveal from an economic point of view the hidden aspects behind the hostile conflict between the two political forces. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is not a normative study to find a solution to political conflict, but a positive study to reveal the mechanism of reciprocity that exists between the two parties of conflict in real politics. Therefore, the analysis is based on game theory methodology. Findings - It is shown that the ruling party should choose a level of preemptive response that is neither insufficient nor excessive if it aims to avoid radical anti-government struggles by opposition parties. We also find that even if the chances of success of the opposition's radical offensive struggle are low, the use of that strategy is not necessarily reduced. In addition, we have obtained comparative static results that do not deviate much from our intuition. What's interesting is that unlike our intuition that the choice of the method will be indifferent if the marginal effects of radical and normal methods of struggle are the same, the opposition party rather chooses the normal method of struggle more often. Research implications or Originality - In forming the analytical model, it reflected the support of the general public following the opposition's struggle against the ruling party in order to capture real politics well in the conflict between the two opposing parties.