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Role of Oxygen Free Radical in the Expression of Interleukin-8 and Interleukin-$1{\beta}$ Gene in Mononuclear Phagocytic Cells (내독소에 의한 말초혈액 단핵구의 IL-8 및 IL-$1{\beta}$ 유전자 발현에서 산소기 역할에 관한 연구)

  • Kang, Min-Jong;Kim, Jae-Yeol;Park, Jae-Seok;Lee, Seung-Joon;Yoo, Chul-Gyu;Kim, Young-Whan;Han, Sung-Koo;Shim, Young-Soo
    • Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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    • v.42 no.6
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    • pp.862-870
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    • 1995
  • Background: Oxygen free radicals have generally been considered as cytotoxic agents. On the other hand, recent results suggest that small nontoxic amounts of these radicals may act a role in intracellular signal transduction pathway and many efforts to reveal the role of these radicals as secondary messengers have been made. It is evident that the oxygen radicals are released by various cell types in response to extracellular stimuli including LPS, TNF, IL-1 and phorbol esters, all of which translocate the transcription factor $NF{\kappa}B$ from cytoplasm to nucleus by releasing an inhibitory protein subunit, $I{\kappa}B$. Activation of $NF{\kappa}B$ is mimicked by exposure to mild oxidant stress, and inhibited by agents that remove oxygen radicals. It means the cytoplasmic form of the inducible tanscription factor $NF{\kappa}B$ might provide a physiologically important target for oxygen radicals. At the same time, it is well known that LPS induces the release of oxygen radicals in neutrophil with the activation of $NF{\kappa}B$. From above facts, we can assume the expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ gene by LPS stimulation may occur through the activation of $NF{\kappa}B$, which is mediated through the release of $I{\kappa}B$ by increasing amounts of oxygen radicals. But definitive evidence is lacking about the role of oxygen free radicals in the expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ gene in mononuclear phagocytic cells. We conducted a study to determine whether oxygen radicals act a role in the expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ gene in mononuclear phagocytic cells. Method: Human peripheral blood monocytes were isolated from healthy volunteers. Time and dose relationship of $H_2O_2$-induced IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA expression was observed by Northern blot analysis. To evaluate the role of oxygen radicals in the expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA by LPS stimulation, pretreatment of various antioxiants including PDTC, TMTU, NAC, ME, Desferrioxamine were done and Northern blot analysis for IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA was performed. Results: In PBMC, dose and time dependent expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA by exogenous $H_2O_2$ was not observed. But various antioxidants suppressed the expression of LPS-induced IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA expression of PBMC and the suppressive activity was most prominant when the pretreatment was done with TMTU. Conclusion: Oxygen free radical may have some role in the expression of IL-8 and IL-$1{\beta}$ mRNA of PBMC but that radical might not be $H_2O_2$.

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The Effects of Autologous Blood Pleurodesis in the Pneumothorax with Persistent Air Leak (지속성 기흉에서 자가혈액을 이용한 흉막유착술의 효과)

  • Yoon, Su-Mi;Shin, Sung-Joon;Kim, Young-Chan;Shon, Jang-Won;Yang, Seok-Chul;Yoon, Ho-Joo;Shin, Dong-Ho;Chung, Won-Sang;Park, Sung-Soo
    • Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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    • v.49 no.6
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    • pp.724-732
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    • 2000
  • Background : In patients with severe chronic lung diseases even a small pneumothorax can result in life-threatening respiratory distress. It is important to treat the attack by chest tube drainage until the lung expands. Pneumothorax with a persistent air leak that does not resolve under prolonged tube thoracostomy suction is usually treated by open operation to excise or oversew a bulla or cluster of blebs to stop the air leak. Pleurodesis by the instillation of chemical agents is used for the patient who has persistent air leak and is not good candidate for surgical treatment. When the primary trial of pleurodesis with common agent fails, it is uncertain which agent should be used f or stopping the air leak by pleurodesis. It is well known that inappropriate drainage of hemothorax results in severe pleural adhesion and thickening. Based on this idea, some reports described a successful treatment with autologous blood instillation for pneumothorax patients with or without residual pleural space. We tried pleurodesis with autologous bood for pneumothorax with persistent air leak and then we evaluated the efficacy and safety. Methods : Fifteen patients who had persistent air leak in the pneumothorax complicated from the severe chronic lung disease were enrolled. They were not good candidates for surgical treatment and doxycycline pleurodesis failed to stop up their air leaks. We used a mixture of autologous blood and 50% dextrose for pleurodesis. Effect and complications were assessed by clinical out∞me, chest radiography and pulmonary function tests. Results : The mean duration of air leak was 18.4${\pm}$6.16 days before ABP (autologous blood and dextrose pleurodesis) and $5.2{\pm}1.68$ days after ABP. The mean severity of pain was $2.3{\pm}0.70$ for DP(doxycycline pleurodesis) and $1.7{\pm}0.59$ for ABDP (p<0.05). There was no other complication except mild fever. Pleural adhesion grade was a mean of $0.6{\pm}0.63$. The mean dyspnea scale was $1.7{\pm}0.46$ before pneumothrax and $2.0{\pm}0.59$ after ABDP (p>0.05). The mean $FEV_1$ was $1.47{\pm}1.01$ before pneumothorax and $1.44{\pm}1.00$ after ABDP (p>0.05). Except in 1 patient, 14 patients had no recurrent pneumothorax. Conclusion : Autologous blood pleurodesis (ABP) was successful for treatment of persistent air leak in the pneumothorax. It was easy and inexpensive and involved less pain than doxycycline pleurodesis. It did not cause complications and severe pleural adhesion. We report that ABP can be considered as a useful treatment for persistent air leak in the pneumothorax complicated from the severe chronic lung disease.

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Effects of firm strategies on customer acquisition of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers: A mediating and moderating role of SaaS technology maturity (SaaS 기업의 차별화 및 가격전략이 고객획득성과에 미치는 영향: SaaS 기술성숙도 수준의 매개효과 및 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Chae, SeongWook;Park, Sungbum
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.151-171
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    • 2014
  • Firms today have sought management effectiveness and efficiency utilizing information technologies (IT). Numerous firms are outsourcing specific information systems functions to cope with their short of information resources or IT experts, or to reduce their capital cost. Recently, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a new type of information system has become one of the powerful outsourcing alternatives. SaaS is software deployed as a hosted and accessed over the internet. It is regarded as the idea of on-demand, pay-per-use, and utility computing and is now being applied to support the core competencies of clients in areas ranging from the individual productivity area to the vertical industry and e-commerce area. In this study, therefore, we seek to quantify the value that SaaS has on business performance by examining the relationships among firm strategies, SaaS technology maturity, and business performance of SaaS providers. We begin by drawing from prior literature on SaaS, technology maturity and firm strategy. SaaS technology maturity is classified into three different phases such as application service providing (ASP), Web-native application, and Web-service application. Firm strategies are manipulated by the low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy. Finally, we considered customer acquisition as a business performance. In this sense, specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we examine the relationships between customer acquisition performance and both low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy of SaaS providers. Secondly, we investigate the mediating and moderating effects of SaaS technology maturity on those relationships. For this purpose, study collects data from the SaaS providers, and their line of applications registered in the database in CNK (Commerce net Korea) in Korea using a questionnaire method by the professional research institution. The unit of analysis in this study is the SBUs (strategic business unit) in the software provider. A total of 199 SBUs is used for analyzing and testing our hypotheses. With regards to the measurement of firm strategy, we take three measurement items for differentiation strategy such as the application uniqueness (referring an application aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target industry), supply channel diversification (regarding whether SaaS vendor had diversified supply chain) as well as the number of specialized expertise and take two items for low cost strategy like subscription fee and initial set-up fee. We employ a hierarchical regression analysis technique for testing moderation effects of SaaS technology maturity and follow the Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if firm strategies affect customer acquisition through technology maturity. Empirical results revealed that, firstly, when differentiation strategy is applied to attain business performance like customer acquisition, the effects of the strategy is moderated by the technology maturity level of SaaS providers. In other words, securing higher level of SaaS technology maturity is essential for higher business performance. For instance, given that firms implement application uniqueness or a distribution channel diversification as a differentiation strategy, they can acquire more customers when their level of SaaS technology maturity is higher rather than lower. Secondly, results indicate that pursuing differentiation strategy or low cost strategy effectively works for SaaS providers' obtaining customer, which means that continuously differentiating their service from others or making their service fee (subscription fee or initial set-up fee) lower are helpful for their business success in terms of acquiring their customers. Lastly, results show that the level of SaaS technology maturity mediates the relationships between low cost strategy and customer acquisition. That is, based on our research design, customers usually perceive the real value of the low subscription fee or initial set-up fee only through the SaaS service provide by vender and, in turn, this will affect their decision making whether subscribe or not.

A Study on the Space Formation and Garden Characteristics of Garden Remains, Gao-Byeoleop for Restoration Design (가오별업(嘉梧別業)의 복원 설계를 위한 공간구성 및 정원 특성에 관한 연구)

  • Rho, Jae-Hyun;Kim, Soon-Ki
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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    • v.36 no.3
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    • pp.58-74
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    • 2018
  • This study aims to propose baseline data for designing restoration of Gaobyulup, researching space formation and characteristics of gardens of Gaobyulup, which located in the foot of Cheonmasan Mountain in Namyangju. Gaobyulup is a remain in retirement of Gyulsan Yu-Won Lee, a representative politician, administrator, and tea drinker in late Joseon Dynasty. The results of the research about the shape of Gaobyulup deducted through reference review, poetry and prose analysis, an on-the-spot survey and residents' interview are below: Lee, who used pseudonym as 'Gyulsan,' which menas Jongnamsan Mountain, yearned Mangcheonbyeoreop(輞川別業) by Yu Wang and retirement with a country house operation by Seogye Sedang Park. In the persuit of this ideal, he created and operated a country house in Gaogok of Yangju, which a family burial ground was located. Gaobyulup, which located in Gaogok in the lower part of Cheonmasan Mountain, was largely composed outer and inner gardens, and the area of house operation was started from a stone post of Gaobokji The inner garden of Gaobyulup was including major garden components like buildings, such as Sasihyanggwan, Obaekganjung, Imharyoe and Toesadam, and Chaewon near Haengrangchae, and Gwawon in an backyard. In addition, Younggwijung pavilion, which located 850m away from Gaobyulup, was the another country house inside the Byulup, thus Gaobyulup shows a duplex space formation. In the inner garden of Gaobyulup, there are Sasihyanggwan, which had functions of Sarangchae as library and depository of old paintings and calligraphic works, and Obaekganjung, a small Sarangchae which connected with Sasihyanggwan in the form of a transept. Yusanggoksuger located near Obaekganjung. Additionally, Imharyeo, a library with a tablet of Byeokryowon(??園), which located in the highest point in Byulup, has the functions of a reading room and a tea house. Many Taihu stones were located not only in Toesadam, a square-formed pond with lotus but also many places in the inner gardens. And rare garden plants were planted. These were closely related to the trend of horticulture for pleasure, wealth, and collecting old paintings and calligraphic works for pleasure of Lee. Meanwhile, the area of Younggwijung pavilion, located in Gaocheon stream fall from Byulup to Manhoiam, looks like Wooampok, a enjoying place of other personages, who use their pseudonym as "Oksan" or "Wooam" Lee identifies Wooampok as "Jesampok" and carved 'Gyulsan' s he declared this place is his operating area. Lee built Younggwijung pavilion and planted many peach trees for recreation of utopia. The stone letters of Byukpadongcheon, located in front of a bridge in the foreside of Younggwijung pavilion, seems another enchanted land created in Gaobokji inside. Lee carved Jeilsan in huge rock on the falls rear Manhoiam temple, which Lee did great role of foundation of the temple, so he identifies that this place was the end of the outer garden of Gaobyulup. This study tries to estimate traces of the country house in Gaogok through reference review and on-th-spot survey, and the results from this study are presumed based on site remains only conformed today. It needs to discover second scenary or stone carved letters between Jeilsan and Jesampok. Additionally, exact formation characteristics of Gaobyulup should be identified through excavation survey later. To do so, an interest and a major role of Namyangju-si must be equipped for future restoration of Gaobyulup.

An Ontology Model for Public Service Export Platform (공공 서비스 수출 플랫폼을 위한 온톨로지 모형)

  • Lee, Gang-Won;Park, Sei-Kwon;Ryu, Seung-Wan;Shin, Dong-Cheon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.149-161
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    • 2014
  • The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

Growth Efficiency, Carcass Quality Characteristics and Profitability of 'High'-Market Weight Pigs ('고체중' 출하돈의 성장효율, 도체 품질 특성 및 수익성)

  • Park, M.J.;Ha, D.M.;Shin, H.W.;Lee, S.H.;Kim, W.K.;Ha, S.H.;Yang, H.S.;Jeong, J.Y.;Joo, S.T.;Lee, C.Y.
    • Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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    • v.49 no.4
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    • pp.459-470
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    • 2007
  • Domestically, finishing pigs are marketed at 110 kg on an average. However, it is thought to be feasible to increase the market weight to 120kg or greater without decreasing the carcass quality, because most domestic pigs for pork production have descended from lean-type lineages. The present study was undertaken to investigate the growth efficiency and profitability of ‘high’-market wt pigs and the physicochemical characteristics and consumers' acceptability of the high-wt carcass. A total of 96 (Yorkshire × Landrace) × Duroc-crossbred gilts and barrows were fed a finisher diet ad laibtum in 16 pens beginning from 90-kg BW, after which the animals were slaughtered at 110kg (control) or ‘high’ market wt (135 and 125kg in gilts & barrows, respectively) and their carcasses were analyzed. Average daily gain and gain:feed did not differ between the two sex or market wt groups, whereas average daily feed intake was greater in the barrow and high market wt groups than in the gilt and 110-kg market wt groups, respectively(P<0.01). Backfat thickness of the high-market wt gilts and barrows corrected for 135 and 125-kg live wt, which were 23.7 and 22.5 mm, respectively, were greater (P<0.01) than their corresponding 110-kg counterparts(19.7 & 21.1 mm). Percentages of the trimmed primal cuts per total trimmed lean (w/w), except for that of loin, differed statistically (P<0.05) between two sex or market wt groups, but their numerical differences were rather small. Crude protein content of the loin was greater in the high vs. 110-kg market group (P<0.01), but crude fat and moisture contents and other physicochemical characteristics including the color of this primal cut were not different between the two sexes or market weights. Aroma, marbling and overall acceptability scores were greater in the high vs. 110-kg market wt group in sensory evaluation for fresh loin (P<0.01); however, overall acceptabilities for cooked loin, belly and ham were not different between the two market wt groups. Marginal profits of the 135- and 125-kg high-market wt gilt and barrow relative to their corresponding 110-kg ones were approximately -35,000 and 3,500 wons per head under the current carcass grading standard and price. However, if it had not been for the upper wt limits for the A- and B-grade carcasses, marginal profits of the high market wt gilt and barrow would have amounted to 22,000 and 11,000 wons per head, respectively. In summary, 120~125-kg market pigs are likely to meet the consumers' preference better than the 110-kg ones and also bring a profit equal to or slightly greater than that of the latter even under the current carcass grading standard. Moreover, if only the upper wt limits of the A- & B-grade carcasses were removed or increased to accommodate the high-wt carcass, the optimum market weights for the gilt and barrow would fall upon their target weights of the present study, i.e. 135 and 125 kg, respectively.

Outcomes after Radiotherapy in Inoperable Patients with Squamous Cell Lung Cancer (수술이 불가능한 편평상피성 폐암의 방사선치료 성적)

  • Ahn Sung-Ja;Chung Woong-Ki;Nah Byung-Sik;Nam Tack-Keun;Kim Young-Chul;Park Kyung-Ok
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.19 no.3
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    • pp.216-223
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    • 2001
  • Purpose : We evaluated retrospectively the outcomes of inoperable squamous cell lung cancer patients treated with radiotherapy to find out prognostic factors affecting survival. Materials and methods : Four hundred and eleven patients diagnosed as squamous cell lung cancer between November 1988 and December 1997 were the basis of this analyses. The planned dose to the gross tumor volume was ranged from 30 to 70.2 Gy. Chemotherapy was combined in 72 patients $(17.5\%)$ with the variable schedule and drug combination regimens. Follow-up period ranged from 1 to 113 months with the median of 8 months and survival status was identified in 381 patients $(92.7\%)$. Overall survival rate was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results : Age ranged from 23 years to 83 years with the median 63 years. The male to female ratio was about 16:1. For all 411 patients, the median overall survival was 8 months and the 1-year survival rate (YSR), 2-YSR, and 5-YSR were $35.6\%,\;12.6\%,\;and\;3.7\%$, respectively. The median and 5-YSR were 29 months and $33.3\%$ for Stage IA, 13 months and $6.3\%$ for Stage IIIA, and 9 months and $3.4\%$ for Stage IIIB, respectively(p=0.00). The median survival by treatment aim was 11 months in radical intent group and 5 months in palliative, respectively (p=0.00). Of 344 patients treated with radical intent, median survival of patients (N=247) who received planned radiotherapy completely was 12 months while that of patients (N=97) who did not was 5 months (p=0.0006). In the analyses of the various prognostic factors affecting to the survival outcomes in 247 patients who completed the planned radiotherapy, tumor location, supraclavicular LAP, SVC syndrome, pleural effusion, total lung atelectasis and hoarseness were statistically significant prognostic factors both in the univariate and multivariate analyses while the addition of chemotherapy was statistically significant only in multivariate analyses. The acute radiation esophagitis requiring analgesics was appeared in 49 patients $(11.9\%)$ and severe radiation esophagitis requiring hospitalization was shown in 2 patients $(0.5\%)$. The radiation pneumonitis requiring steroid medication was shown in 62 patients $(15.1\%)$ and severe pneumonitis requiring hospitalization was occurred in 2 patients $(0.5\%)$. During follow-up, 114 patients $(27.7\%)$ had progression of local disease with 10 months of median time to recur (range : $1\~87\;months$) and 49 patients $(11.9\%)$ had distant failure with 7 months of median value (range : $1\~52\;months$). Second malignancy before or after the diagnosis of lung cancer was appeared in 11 patients Conclusion : The conventional radiotherapy in the patients with locally advanced squamous cell lung cancer has given small survival advantage over supportive care and it is very important to select the patient group who can obtain the maximal benefit and to select the radiotherapy technique that would not compromise the life quality in these patients.

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A study on the Success Factors and Strategy of Information Technology Investment Based on Intelligent Economic Simulation Modeling (지능형 시뮬레이션 모형을 기반으로 한 정보기술 투자 성과 요인 및 전략 도출에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.35-55
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    • 2013
  • Information technology is a critical resource necessary for any company hoping to support and realize its strategic goals, which contribute to growth promotion and sustainable development. The selection of information technology and its strategic use are imperative for the enhanced performance of every aspect of company management, leading a wide range of companies to have invested continuously in information technology. Despite researchers, managers, and policy makers' keen interest in how information technology contributes to organizational performance, there is uncertainty and debate about the result of information technology investment. In other words, researchers and managers cannot easily identify the independent factors that can impact the investment performance of information technology. This is mainly owing to the fact that many factors, ranging from the internal components of a company, strategies, and external customers, are interconnected with the investment performance of information technology. Using an agent-based simulation technique, this research extracts factors expected to affect investment performance on information technology, simplifies the analyses of their relationship with economic modeling, and examines the performance dependent on changes in the factors. In terms of economic modeling, I expand the model that highlights the way in which product quality moderates the relationship between information technology investments and economic performance (Thatcher and Pingry, 2004) by considering the cost of information technology investment and the demand creation resulting from product quality enhancement. For quality enhancement and its consequences for demand creation, I apply the concept of information quality and decision-maker quality (Raghunathan, 1999). This concept implies that the investment on information technology improves the quality of information, which, in turn, improves decision quality and performance, thus enhancing the level of product or service quality. Additionally, I consider the effect of word of mouth among consumers, which creates new demand for a product or service through the information diffusion effect. This demand creation is analyzed with an agent-based simulation model that is widely used for network analyses. Results show that the investment on information technology enhances the quality of a company's product or service, which indirectly affects the economic performance of that company, particularly with regard to factors such as consumer surplus, company profit, and company productivity. Specifically, when a company makes its initial investment in information technology, the resultant increase in the quality of a company's product or service immediately has a positive effect on consumer surplus, but the investment cost has a negative effect on company productivity and profit. As time goes by, the enhancement of the quality of that company's product or service creates new consumer demand through the information diffusion effect. Finally, the new demand positively affects the company's profit and productivity. In terms of the investment strategy for information technology, this study's results also reveal that the selection of information technology needs to be based on analysis of service and the network effect of customers, and demonstrate that information technology implementation should fit into the company's business strategy. Specifically, if a company seeks the short-term enhancement of company performance, it needs to have a one-shot strategy (making a large investment at one time). On the other hand, if a company seeks a long-term sustainable profit structure, it needs to have a split strategy (making several small investments at different times). The findings from this study make several contributions to the literature. In terms of methodology, the study integrates both economic modeling and simulation technique in order to overcome the limitations of each methodology. It also indicates the mediating effect of product quality on the relationship between information technology and the performance of a company. Finally, it analyzes the effect of information technology investment strategies and information diffusion among consumers on the investment performance of information technology.

Diagnostic Values of Abdominal Ultrasonography in Patients with Fever and Abdominal Symptoms (발열과 복부 증상을 주소로 하는 환아에서 복부 초음파 검사의 진단적 의의에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Mi-Kyung;Im, Chang-Sung;Ahn, Sun-Mi;Kim, Chang-Hi;Lee, Dong-Jin;Kwan, Joong-Hyuck;Park, Yong-Hoon
    • Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.191-202
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    • 1995
  • Purpose: Acute febrile illness in children frequently accompanies with abdominal symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, even if its etiology is not occured from the gastrointestinal tract. If the etiology of fever was unknown and the fever was accompanied with abdominal symptoms, we should be concerned about whether the etiology of fever was originated from the gastrointestinal tract or interpretated from the abnormality in the gastrointestinal tract. This study was performed to evaluate the diagnostic value of abdominal ultrasonography in patients with fever and abdominal symptoms. Methods: We reviewed retrospectively the medical records of abdominal ultrasonographic (US) findings of 60 cases of acute febrile illness with abdominal symptoms at department of Pediatrics, Ulsan Dongang General Hospital during the period from January 1994 to June 1995. Results: The abnormal abdominal US findings obtained were as follows. 1) The abnormal US findings were seen in 56 cases (93.3%). 2) The most common abnormal US finding was the enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes in 52 cases (86.7%) 3) The enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes with or without intra-abdominal fluid were seen in 30 cases (50.0%) of a wide variety of illnesses, so their diagnostic values were absent. 4) The enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes and splenomegaly with or without ileocecitis were seen in 7 cases. Among them, 4 cases (6.7%) were confirmed as typhoid fever. 5) The US findings in 6 cases of typhoid fever were the enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes in all cases (100%), splenomegaly in 4 cases (66.7%), ileocecitis in 1 case (16.7%), enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes and splenomegaly in 4 cases (66.7%), enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes, splenomegaly and ileocecitis in 1 cases (16.7%). 6) The enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes and the abnormalities around the appendix were seen in 7 cases (11.7%), which were confirmed as appendicitis all. 7) The thickening of wall in urinary bladder was seen in 2 cases (3.3%) of acute cystitis and acute hemorrhagic cystitis. 8) The subtle thickening of wall in colon was seen in 1 cases (1.7%) of shigellosis. Conclusions: The enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes, splenomegaly and ileocolitis on the abdominal ultrasonography in patients with fever and abdominal symptoms aree suggestive findings of typhoid fever. The enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes and the abnormalities around the appendix on abdominal ultrasonography make the rapid diagnosis of acute appendicitis and its complications, when physical examination is difficult in small children and diagnosis of their illnesses is obscure in patients with fever and abdominal pain.

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A Study of Anomaly Detection for ICT Infrastructure using Conditional Multimodal Autoencoder (ICT 인프라 이상탐지를 위한 조건부 멀티모달 오토인코더에 관한 연구)

  • Shin, Byungjin;Lee, Jonghoon;Han, Sangjin;Park, Choong-Shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.27 no.3
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    • pp.57-73
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    • 2021
  • Maintenance and prevention of failure through anomaly detection of ICT infrastructure is becoming important. System monitoring data is multidimensional time series data. When we deal with multidimensional time series data, we have difficulty in considering both characteristics of multidimensional data and characteristics of time series data. When dealing with multidimensional data, correlation between variables should be considered. Existing methods such as probability and linear base, distance base, etc. are degraded due to limitations called the curse of dimensions. In addition, time series data is preprocessed by applying sliding window technique and time series decomposition for self-correlation analysis. These techniques are the cause of increasing the dimension of data, so it is necessary to supplement them. The anomaly detection field is an old research field, and statistical methods and regression analysis were used in the early days. Currently, there are active studies to apply machine learning and artificial neural network technology to this field. Statistically based methods are difficult to apply when data is non-homogeneous, and do not detect local outliers well. The regression analysis method compares the predictive value and the actual value after learning the regression formula based on the parametric statistics and it detects abnormality. Anomaly detection using regression analysis has the disadvantage that the performance is lowered when the model is not solid and the noise or outliers of the data are included. There is a restriction that learning data with noise or outliers should be used. The autoencoder using artificial neural networks is learned to output as similar as possible to input data. It has many advantages compared to existing probability and linear model, cluster analysis, and map learning. It can be applied to data that does not satisfy probability distribution or linear assumption. In addition, it is possible to learn non-mapping without label data for teaching. However, there is a limitation of local outlier identification of multidimensional data in anomaly detection, and there is a problem that the dimension of data is greatly increased due to the characteristics of time series data. In this study, we propose a CMAE (Conditional Multimodal Autoencoder) that enhances the performance of anomaly detection by considering local outliers and time series characteristics. First, we applied Multimodal Autoencoder (MAE) to improve the limitations of local outlier identification of multidimensional data. Multimodals are commonly used to learn different types of inputs, such as voice and image. The different modal shares the bottleneck effect of Autoencoder and it learns correlation. In addition, CAE (Conditional Autoencoder) was used to learn the characteristics of time series data effectively without increasing the dimension of data. In general, conditional input mainly uses category variables, but in this study, time was used as a condition to learn periodicity. The CMAE model proposed in this paper was verified by comparing with the Unimodal Autoencoder (UAE) and Multi-modal Autoencoder (MAE). The restoration performance of Autoencoder for 41 variables was confirmed in the proposed model and the comparison model. The restoration performance is different by variables, and the restoration is normally well operated because the loss value is small for Memory, Disk, and Network modals in all three Autoencoder models. The process modal did not show a significant difference in all three models, and the CPU modal showed excellent performance in CMAE. ROC curve was prepared for the evaluation of anomaly detection performance in the proposed model and the comparison model, and AUC, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score were compared. In all indicators, the performance was shown in the order of CMAE, MAE, and AE. Especially, the reproduction rate was 0.9828 for CMAE, which can be confirmed to detect almost most of the abnormalities. The accuracy of the model was also improved and 87.12%, and the F1-score was 0.8883, which is considered to be suitable for anomaly detection. In practical aspect, the proposed model has an additional advantage in addition to performance improvement. The use of techniques such as time series decomposition and sliding windows has the disadvantage of managing unnecessary procedures; and their dimensional increase can cause a decrease in the computational speed in inference.The proposed model has characteristics that are easy to apply to practical tasks such as inference speed and model management.