• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.490-496
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• 1998

Purpose: We evaluated brain perfusion SPECT findings of MELAS syndrome and mitochondrial myopathy in correlation with MR imaging in search of specific imaging features. Materials and Methods: Subjects were five patients (four females and one male; age range, 1 to 25 year) who presented with repeated stroke-like episodes, seizures or developmental delay or asymptomatic but had elevated lactic acid in CSF and serum. Conventional non-contrast MR imaging and Tc-99m-ethyl cysteinate dimer (ECD) brain perfusion SPECT were Performed and imaging features were analyzed. Results: MRI demonstrated increased T2 signal intensities in the affected areas of gray and white matters mainly in the parietal (4/5) and occipital lobes (4/5) and in the basal ganglia (1/5), which were not restricted to a specific vascular territory. SPECT demonstrated decreased perfusion in the corresponding regions of MRI lesions. In addition, there were perfusion defects in parietal (1 patient), temporal (2), and frontal (1) lobes and basal ganglia (1) and thalami (2). In a patient with mitochondrial myopathy who had normal MRI, decreased perfusion was noted in left parietal area and bilateral thalami. Conclusion: Tc-99m ECD SPECT imaging in patients with MELAS syndrome and mitochondrial myopathy showed hypoperfusion of parieto-occipital cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus and temporal cortex, which were not restricted to a specific vascular territory. There were no specific imaging features on SPECT. The significance of abnormal perfusion on SPECT without corresponding MR abnormalities needs to be evaluated further in larger number of patients.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-62
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• 2012

As distribution environment is changing rapidly and competition is more intensive in the channel of distribution, the importance of retailer image and retailer equity is increasing as a different competitive advantages. Also, consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behavior is significantly affected by the symbols such as retailer image which identify retailer in the market place. That is, consumers do not choose products or retailers for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products or retailers as expressed in their self images. The concept of self-image congruence has been utilized by marketers and researchers as an aid in better understanding how consumers identify themselves with the brands they buy and the retailer they patronize. Although self-image congruity theory has been tested across many product categories, the theory has not been tested extensively in the retailing. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of self image congruence between retailer image and self image of consumer on retailer equity such as retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to find out whether retailer-self image congruence can be a new antecedent of retailer equity. In addition, this study tries to examine how four-dimensional retailer equity constructs (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) affect customers' repatronage intention. For this study, data were gathered by survey and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study was 254. The reliability of the all seven dimensions was estimated with Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability values and average variance extracted values. We determined whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity and discriminant validity by Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted values exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the AMOS 18.0. As expected, the image congruence hypotheses were supported. The greater the degree of congruence between retailer image and self-image, the more favorable were consumers' retailer evaluations. The all two retailer-self image congruence (actual self-image congruence and ideal self-image congruence) affected customer based retailer equity. This result means that retailer-self image congruence is important cue for customers to estimate retailer equity. In other words, consumers are often more likely to prefer products and retail stores that have images similar to their own self-image. Especially, it appeared that effect for the ideal self-image congruence was consistently larger than the actual self-image congruence on the retailer equity. The results mean that consumers prefer or search for stores that have images compatible with consumer's perception of ideal-self. In addition, this study revealed that customers' estimations toward customer based retailer equity affected the repatronage intention. The results showed that all four dimensions (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) had positive effect on the repatronage intention. That is, management and investment to improve image congruence between retailer and consumers' self make customers' positive evaluation of retailer equity, and then the positive customer based retailer equity can enhance the repatonage intention. And to conclude, retailer's image management is an important part of successful retailer performance management, and the retailer-self image congruence is an important antecedent of retailer equity. Therefore, it is more important to develop and improve retailer's image similar to consumers' image. Given the pressure to provide increased image congruence, it is not surprising that retailers have made significant investments in enhancing the fit between retailer image and self image of consumer. The enhancing such self-image congruence may allow marketers to target customers who may be influenced by image appeals in advertising.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.25-52
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• 2018

This study performs social network analysis based on consumer sentiment related to a location in Seoul using data reflecting consumers' web search activities and emotional evaluations associated with commerce. The study focuses on large commercial districts in Seoul. In addition, to consider their various aspects, social network indexes were combined with the trading area's public data to verify factors affecting the area's sales. According to R square's change, We can see that the model has a little high R square value even though it includes only the district's public data represented by static data. However, the present study confirmed that the R square of the model combined with the network index derived from the social network analysis was even improved much more. A regression analysis of the trading area's public data showed that the five factors of 'number of market district,' 'residential area per person,' 'satisfaction of residential environment,' 'rate of change of trade,' and 'survival rate over 3 years' among twenty two variables. The study confirmed a significant influence on the sales of the trading area. According to the results, 'residential area per person' has the highest standardized beta value. Therefore, 'residential area per person' has the strongest influence on commercial sales. In addition, 'residential area per person,' 'number of market district,' and 'survival rate over 3 years' were found to have positive effects on the sales of all trading area. Thus, as the number of market districts in the trading area increases, residential area per person increases, and as the survival rate over 3 years of each store in the trading area increases, sales increase. On the other hand, 'satisfaction of residential environment' and 'rate of change of trade' were found to have a negative effect on sales. In the case of 'satisfaction of residential environment,' sales increase when the satisfaction level is low. Therefore, as consumer dissatisfaction with the residential environment increases, sales increase. The 'rate of change of trade' shows that sales increase with the decreasing acceleration of transaction frequency. According to the social network analysis, of the 25 regional trading areas in Seoul, Yangcheon-gu has the highest degree of connection. In other words, it has common sentiments with many other trading areas. On the other hand, Nowon-gu and Jungrang-gu have the lowest degree of connection. In other words, they have relatively distinct sentiments from other trading areas. The social network indexes used in the combination model are 'density of ego network,' 'degree centrality,' 'closeness centrality,' 'betweenness centrality,' and 'eigenvector centrality.' The combined model analysis confirmed that the degree centrality and eigenvector centrality of the social network index have a significant influence on sales and the highest influence in the model. 'Degree centrality' has a negative effect on the sales of the districts. This implies that sales decrease when holding various sentiments of other trading area, which conflicts with general social myths. However, this result can be interpreted to mean that if a trading area has low 'degree centrality,' it delivers unique and special sentiments to consumers. The findings of this study can also be interpreted to mean that sales can be increased if the trading area increases consumer recognition by forming a unique sentiment and city atmosphere that distinguish it from other trading areas. On the other hand, 'eigenvector centrality' has the greatest effect on sales in the combined model. In addition, the results confirmed a positive effect on sales. This finding shows that sales increase when a trading area is connected to others with stronger centrality than when it has common sentiments with others. This study can be used as an empirical basis for establishing and implementing a city and trading area strategy plan considering consumers' desired sentiments. In addition, we expect to provide entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs entering the trading area with sentiments possessed by those in the trading area and directions into the trading area considering the district-sentiment structure.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.188-198
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• 2010

This study attempts to examine the influence that negative WOM (NWOM) has in an online context. It specifically focuses on the impact of the service failure description and the perceived intention of the communication provider on consumer evaluations of firm competence, attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intentions. Studies of communication persuasiveness focus on "who says what; to whom; in which channel; with what effect (Chiu 2007)." In this research study, we examine electronic web posting, particularly focusing on two aspects of "what": the level of service failure communicated and perceived intention of the individual posting. It stands to reason electronic NWOM that appears to be trying to damage a product’s or firm's reputation will be viewed as more biased and will thus be considered as less credible. According to attribution theory, people search for the causes of events especially those that are negative and unexpected (Weiner 2006). Hennig-Thurau and Walsh (2003) state "since the reader has only limited knowledge and trust of the author of an online articulation the quality of the contribution could be expected to serve as a potent moderator of the articulation-behavior relationship. We therefore posit the following hypotheses: H1. Subjects exposed to electronic NWOM describing a high level of service failure will provide lower scores on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention than will subjects exposed to electronic NWOM describing a low level of service failure. H2. Subjects exposed to electronic NWOM with a warning intent will provide lower scores on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention than will subjects exposed to electronic NWOM with a vengeful intent. H3. Level of service failure in electronic NWOM will interact with the perceived intention of the electronic NWOM, such that there will be a decrease in mean response on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention from electronic NWOM with a warning intent to a vengeful intent. The main study involved a2 (service failure severity) x2 (NWOM with warning versus vengeful intent) factorial experiment. Stimuli were presented to subjects online using a mock online web posting. The scenario described a service failure associated with non-acceptance of a gift card in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment. A national sample was recruited through an online research firm. A total of 113 subjects participated in the study. A total of 104 surveys were analyzed. The scenario was perceived to be realistic with 92.3% giving the scenario a greater than average response. Manipulations were satisfactory. Measures were pre-tested and validated. Items were analyzed and found reliable and valid. MANOVA results found the multivariate interaction was not significant, allowing our interpretation to proceed to the main effects. Significant main effects were found for post intent and service failure severity. The post intent main effect was attributable to attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intention. The service failure severity main effect was attributable to all four dependent variables: firm competence, attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intention. Specifically, firm competence for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Attitude toward the firm for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Positive word of mouth for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Behavioral intention for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower for electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Therefore, H1a, H1b, H1c and H1d were all supported. In addition, attitude toward the firm for electronic NWOM with a warning intent was lower than electronic NWOM with a vengeful intent. Positive word of mouth for electronic NWOM with a warning intent was lower than electronic NWOM with a vengeful intent. Behavioral intention for electronic NWOM with a warning intent was lower than electronic NWOM with a vengeful intent. Thus, H2b, H2c and H2d were supported. However, H2a was not supported though results were in the hypothesized direction. Otherwise, there was no significant multivariate service failure severity by post intent interaction, nor was there a significant univariate service failure severity by post intent interaction for any of the three hypothesized variables. Thus, H3 was not supported for any of the four hypothesized variables. This study has research and managerial implications. The findings of this study support prior research that service failure severity impacts consumer perceptions, attitude, positive word of mouth and behavioral intentions (Weun et al. 2004). Of further relevance, this response is evidenced in the online context, suggesting the need for firms to engage in serious focused service recovery efforts. With respect to perceived intention of electronic NWOM, the findings support prior research suggesting reader's attributions of the intentions of a source influence the strength of its impact on perceptions, attitude, positive word of mouth and behavioral intentions. The implication for managers suggests while consumers do find online communications to be credible and influential, not all communications are weighted the same. A benefit of electronic WOM, even when it may be potentially damaging, is it can be monitored for potential problems and additionally offers the possibility of redress.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.5-20
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• 1997

War and poverty depress the consumption of cosmetics, while peace and prosperity encourage their proliferation. With the end of World War II, the US, Europe and Japan witnessed rapid growth of their cosmetic industries. The ending of the Cold War has stimulated the growth of the industry in Eastern Europe. Improved economies, and mass communication are also responsible for the fast growth of the cosmetic industries in many Asian nations. The rapid development of the cosmetic industry in mainland China over the past decade proves that changing economies and political climates can deeply affect the health of our business. In addition to war, economy, political climate and mass communication, factors such as lifestyle, religion, morality and value concepts, can also affect the growth of our industry. Cosmetics are the product of the society. As society and the needs of its people change, cosmetics also evolve with respect to their contents, packaging, distribution, marketing concepts, and emphasis. In many ways, cosmetics mirror our society, reflecting social changes. Until the early 70's, cosmetics in the US were primarily developed for white women. The civil rights movement of the 60's gave birth to ethnic cosmetics, and products designed for African-Americans became popular in the 70's and 80's. The consumerism of the 70's led the FDA to tighten cosmetic regulations, forcing manufacturers to disclose ingredients on their labels. The result was the spread of safety-oriented, "hypoallergenic" cosmetics and more selective use of ingredients. The new ingredient labeling law in Europe is also likely to affect the manner in which development chemists choose ingredients for new products. Environmental pollution, too, can affect cosmetics trends. For example, the concern over ozone depletion in the stratosphere has promoted the consumption of suncare products. Similarly, the popularity of natural cosmetic ingredients, the search of non-animal testing methods, and ecology-conscious cosmetic packaging seen in recent years all reflect the profound influences of our changing world. In the 1980's, a class of efficacy-oriented skin-care products, which the New York Times dubbed "serious" cosmetics, emerged in the US. "Cosmeceuticals" refer to hybrids of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals which have gained importance in the US in the 90's and are quickly spreading world-wide. In spite of regulatory problems, consumer demand and new technologies continue to encourage their development. New classes of cosmeceuticals are emerging to meet the demands of increasingly affluent Asian consumers as we enter the 21st century. as we enter the 21st century.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.111-126
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• 2017

Recommender systems based on association rule mining significantly contribute to seller's sales by reducing consumers' time to search for products that they want. Recommendations based on the frequency of transactions such as orders can effectively screen out the products that are statistically marketable among multiple products. A product with a high possibility of sales, however, can be omitted from the recommendation if it records insufficient number of transactions at the beginning of the sale. Products missing from the associated recommendations may lose the chance of exposure to consumers, which leads to a decline in the number of transactions. In turn, diminished transactions may create a vicious circle of lost opportunity to be recommended. Thus, initial sales are likely to remain stagnant for a certain period of time. Products that are susceptible to fashion or seasonality, such as clothing, may be greatly affected. This study was aimed at expanding association rules to include into the list of recommendations those products whose initial trading frequency of transactions is low despite the possibility of high sales. The particular purpose is to predict the strength of the direct connection of two unconnected items through the properties of the paths located between them. An association between two items revealed in transactions can be interpreted as the interaction between them, which can be expressed as a link in a social network whose nodes are items. The first step calculates the centralities of the nodes in the middle of the paths that indirectly connect the two nodes without direct connection. The next step identifies the number of the paths and the shortest among them. These extracts are used as independent variables in the regression analysis to predict future connection strength between the nodes. The strength of the connection between the two nodes of the model, which is defined by the number of nodes between the two nodes, is measured after a certain period of time. The regression analysis results confirm that the number of paths between the two products, the distance of the shortest path, and the number of neighboring items connected to the products are significantly related to their potential strength. This study used actual order transaction data collected for three months from February to April in 2016 from an online commerce company. To reduce the complexity of analytics as the scale of the network grows, the analysis was performed only on miscellaneous goods. Two consecutively purchased items were chosen from each customer's transactions to obtain a pair of antecedent and consequent, which secures a link needed for constituting a social network. The direction of the link was determined in the order in which the goods were purchased. Except for the last ten days of the data collection period, the social network of associated items was built for the extraction of independent variables. The model predicts the number of links to be connected in the next ten days from the explanatory variables. Of the 5,711 previously unconnected links, 611 were newly connected for the last ten days. Through experiments, the proposed model demonstrated excellent predictions. Of the 571 links that the proposed model predicts, 269 were confirmed to have been connected. This is 4.4 times more than the average of 61, which can be found without any prediction model. This study is expected to be useful regarding industries whose new products launch quickly with short life cycles, since their exposure time is critical. Also, it can be used to detect diseases that are rarely found in the early stages of medical treatment because of the low incidence of outbreaks. Since the complexity of the social networking analysis is sensitive to the number of nodes and links that make up the network, this study was conducted in a particular category of miscellaneous goods. Future research should consider that this condition may limit the opportunity to detect unexpected associations between products belonging to different categories of classification.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.103-122
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• 2011

Recently, numerous documents have been made available electronically. Internet search engines and digital libraries commonly return query results containing hundreds or even thousands of documents. In this situation, it is virtually impossible for users to examine complete documents to determine whether they might be useful for them. For this reason, some on-line documents are accompanied by a list of keywords specified by the authors in an effort to guide the users by facilitating the filtering process. In this way, a set of keywords is often considered a condensed version of the whole document and therefore plays an important role for document retrieval, Web page retrieval, document clustering, summarization, text mining, and so on. Since many academic journals ask the authors to provide a list of five or six keywords on the first page of an article, keywords are most familiar in the context of journal articles. However, many other types of documents could not benefit from the use of keywords, including Web pages, email messages, news reports, magazine articles, and business papers. Although the potential benefit is large, the implementation itself is the obstacle; manually assigning keywords to all documents is a daunting task, or even impractical in that it is extremely tedious and time-consuming requiring a certain level of domain knowledge. Therefore, it is highly desirable to automate the keyword generation process. There are mainly two approaches to achieving this aim: keyword assignment approach and keyword extraction approach. Both approaches use machine learning methods and require, for training purposes, a set of documents with keywords already attached. In the former approach, there is a given set of vocabulary, and the aim is to match them to the texts. In other words, the keywords assignment approach seeks to select the words from a controlled vocabulary that best describes a document. Although this approach is domain dependent and is not easy to transfer and expand, it can generate implicit keywords that do not appear in a document. On the other hand, in the latter approach, the aim is to extract keywords with respect to their relevance in the text without prior vocabulary. In this approach, automatic keyword generation is treated as a classification task, and keywords are commonly extracted based on supervised learning techniques. Thus, keyword extraction algorithms classify candidate keywords in a document into positive or negative examples. Several systems such as Extractor and Kea were developed using keyword extraction approach. Most indicative words in a document are selected as keywords for that document and as a result, keywords extraction is limited to terms that appear in the document. Therefore, keywords extraction cannot generate implicit keywords that are not included in a document. According to the experiment results of Turney, about 64% to 90% of keywords assigned by the authors can be found in the full text of an article. Inversely, it also means that 10% to 36% of the keywords assigned by the authors do not appear in the article, which cannot be generated through keyword extraction algorithms. Our preliminary experiment result also shows that 37% of keywords assigned by the authors are not included in the full text. This is the reason why we have decided to adopt the keyword assignment approach. In this paper, we propose a new approach for automatic keyword assignment namely IVSM(Inverse Vector Space Model). The model is based on a vector space model. which is a conventional information retrieval model that represents documents and queries by vectors in a multidimensional space. IVSM generates an appropriate keyword set for a specific document by measuring the distance between the document and the keyword sets. The keyword assignment process of IVSM is as follows: (1) calculating the vector length of each keyword set based on each keyword weight; (2) preprocessing and parsing a target document that does not have keywords; (3) calculating the vector length of the target document based on the term frequency; (4) measuring the cosine similarity between each keyword set and the target document; and (5) generating keywords that have high similarity scores. Two keyword generation systems were implemented applying IVSM: IVSM system for Web-based community service and stand-alone IVSM system. Firstly, the IVSM system is implemented in a community service for sharing knowledge and opinions on current trends such as fashion, movies, social problems, and health information. The stand-alone IVSM system is dedicated to generating keywords for academic papers, and, indeed, it has been tested through a number of academic papers including those published by the Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics, the Korea Research Academy of Distribution Information, the Korea Logistics Society, the Korea Logistics Research Association, and the Korea Port Economic Association. We measured the performance of IVSM by the number of matches between the IVSM-generated keywords and the author-assigned keywords. According to our experiment, the precisions of IVSM applied to Web-based community service and academic journals were 0.75 and 0.71, respectively. The performance of both systems is much better than that of baseline systems that generate keywords based on simple probability. Also, IVSM shows comparable performance to Extractor that is a representative system of keyword extraction approach developed by Turney. As electronic documents increase, we expect that IVSM proposed in this paper can be applied to many electronic documents in Web-based community and digital library.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 1997

Purpose : Radiation pneumonitis is one of the complications caused by radiation therapy that includes a Portion of the lung tissue. The severity of radiation induced pulmonary dysfunction depends on the irradiated lung volume, total dose, dose rate and underlying Pulmonary function. It also depends on whether chemotherapy is done or not. The irradiated lung volume is the most important factor to predict the pulmonary dysfunction in breast cancer Patients following radiation therapy. There are some data that show the irradiated lung volume measured from CT scans as a part of treatment Planning with the tangential beams. But such data have not been reported in Korea. We planned to evaluate the irradiated lung volume quantitatively using CT scans for the breast tangential field and search for useful factors that could Predict the irradiated lung volume Materials and Methods : The lung volume was measured for 25 patients with breast cancer irradiated with tangential field from Jan.1995 to Aug.1996. Parameters that can predict the irradiated lung volume included; (1) the peruendicular distance from the Posterior tangential edge to the posterior part of the anterior chest wall at the center of the field (CLD) ; (2) the maximum perpendicular distance from the posterior tangential field edge to the posterior Part of the anterior chest wall (MLD) ; (3) the greatest perpendicular distance from the Posterior tangential edge to the posterior part of anterior chest wall on CT image at the center of the longitudinal field (GPD) ; (4) the length of the longitudinal field (L). The irradiated lung volume(RV), the entire both lung volume(EV) and the ipsilateral lung volume(IV) were measured using dose volume histogram. The relationship between the irradiated lung volume and predictors was evaluated by regression analysis. Results :The RV is 61-279cc (mean 170cc), the RV/EV is $2.9-13.0\%\;(mean\;5.8\%)$ and the RV/IV is $4.9-29.0\%\;(mean\;12.2\%)$. The CLD, the MLD and the GPD ave 1.9-3.3cm, 1.9-3.3cm and 1.4-3.1cm respectively. The significant relations between the irradiated lung volume such as RV. RV/EV, RV/IV and parameters such as CLD, MLD, GPO, L. $CLD\timesL,\;MLD\timesL\;and\;GPD\timesL$ are not found with little variances in parameters. The RV/IV of the left breast irradiation is significantly larger than that of the right but the RV/EVS do not show the differences. There is no symptomatic radiation pneumonitis at least during 6 months follow up. Conclusion : The significant relationship between the irradiated lung volume and predictors is not found with little variation on parameters. The irradiated lung volume in the tangential held is liss than $10\%$ of entire lung volume when CLO is less than 3cm. The RV/IV of the left tangential field is larger than that of the right but there was no significant differences in RV/EVS. Symptomatic radiation pneumonitis has not occurred during minimum 6 months follow up.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.26 no.1 s.41
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• pp.1-19
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• 1993

Mail questionnaire was administrated to 370 practising physicians and 388 pharmacists in Taegu city selected by systematic sampling to examine utilization states and opinion of pharmacy under medical care insurance programme and the attitude to the functional division between physicians and pharmacists from April to May 1992. Regarding the opinion on the outcome of drug-store under medical insurance, 71.2 percent of practicing physician answered faliure but 13.4 percent of practicing pharmacists answered failure in contrast. Fifty percent of practicing physician asserted introducing functional division between physician and pharmacist while 66.9 percent of practicing pharmacist answered drug-store under medical insurance itself is sucessful programme. Average daily numbers of preparation of medicine was 32.2 case. Percentage of utilization of drug-store under medical issurance to average daily cases of preparing of medicine was 20 percent, percentage of utilization with physician's prescription was 0.7 percent. And 58.7 percent of practicing physician experienced outside the institute prescription. Regarding the opinion on the pros and cons of enforcing functional division between physician and pharmacist, 59.2 percent of practicing physician prefered pros and 17.7 percent cons, but 38 percent of practicing pharmacist prefered pros and 45.5 percent cons. And pharmacist knew better the content of functional division between physician and pharmacist than physician. As a reason for pros of enforcing functional division between physician and pharmacist, practicing physician emphasized to prevent misuse or abuse of medicine but practicing pharmacist emphasized to display physician and pharmacist's professional ability. And as an opinion on implementation style of functional division between physician and pharmacist in pros respondents, practicing physician favored mandatory enforcement (52.3%), while practicing pharmacist favored partial incomplete functional division (81.7%). As the method of prescription if functional division between physician and pharmacist will be enforced, both practicing physician and pharmacist prefered generic name (44.0%, 89%) mostly, but physician prefered brand name (35.3%) secondly. Regarding the reason for not implementing functional division between physician and pharmacist up to date, both physician and pharmacist answered problem of business right between physician and pharmacist, followed by lack of recognition, and interest of people and lack of the govermental willness. Regarding the opinion on prior decision of condition for enforcing functional division between physician and pharmacist, practicing physician and pharmacist named uneven distribution of medical facilities and drug-store between rural and urban, inequality of physician and pharmacist manpower and the problem of manpower demand and supply mostly, and practicing physician pointed out establishing attitude of acceptance on the part of pharmacist and practicing pharmacist favored establishing attitude of acceptance on the part of physician, which was different attitudes between physician and pharmacist. Following conclusion was reached ; 1. Current drug-store under medical insurance program yield insufficient outcome, so we should consider program conversion from drug-store under medical insurance program to functional division between physician and pharmacist. 2. There were problem of business right and conflicts between physician and pharmacist at enforcing functional division between physician and pharmacist, so the goverment should search for formulating plan to resolve the problem and have neutral willness for the protection of the national health.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

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 ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).