• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.88-99
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• 2007

The application of a process view, as complement to the traditional functional division, is often a way to highlight organisational improvement potential. This paper examines the process of providing university level education in quality management, using Sweden as an example. The purpose is to assess the performance of university education as part of the supply chain of providing quality management to a society. This has been done by studying the actual offering compared to a notional benchmark of best performance. Preliminary results indicate that there could be a significant improvement potential in both providing more education of the right type and in the right way. A lot of similar basic courses are given but with varying names, possibly reflecting difficulties in defining the area of quality management and its constituents. An important reason for the detected improvement potential seems to be the lack of ownership of the studied supply chain of providing university level quality education to the Swedish society.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.48-57
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• 2024

Cyberthreats and crimes have become common in society and demand the adoption of robust security measures. Financial cybercrimes, personal information breaches, and spam messages are now prevalent, while companies and nations face an increasing number of cyberthreats and attacks such as distributed denial of service, ransomware, and malware. As the overall socioeconomic landscape undergoes digitalization powered by big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence technologies, the importance of cybersecurity is expected to steadily increase. Developed nations are actively implementing various policies to strengthen cybersecurity and providing government support for research and development activities to bolster their domestic cybersecurity industries. In particular, the South Korean government has designated cybersecurity as one of the 12 nationwide strategic technology sectors. We examine the current landscape of cybersecurity companies and the information and communication technology supply chain, providing insights into the domestic cybersecurity market and suggesting implications for South Korea.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.106-115
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• 2018

Objective: The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary standard ileal digestible (SID) valine:lysine ratios on performance, intestinal morphology, amino acids of liver and muscle, plasma indices and mRNA expression of branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) metabolism enzymes. Methods: A total of 144 crossbred pigs (Duroc${\times}$Landrace${\times}$Large White) weaned at $28{\pm}4days$ of age ($8.79{\pm}0.02kg$ body weight) were randomly allotted to 1 of 4 diets formulated to provide SID valine:lysine ratios of 50%, 60%, 70%, or 80%. Each diet was fed to 6 pens of pigs with 6 pigs per pen (3 gilts and 3 barrows) for 28 days. Results: Average daily gain increased quadratically (p<0.05), the villous height of the duodenum, jejunum and ileum increased linearly (p<0.05) as the SID valine:lysine ratio increased. The concentrations of plasma ${\alpha}-keto$ isovaleric and valine increased linearly (p<0.05), plasma aspartate, asparagine and cysteine decreased (p<0.05) as the SID valine:lysine ratio increased. An increase in SID lysine:valine levels increased mRNA expression levels of mitochondrial BCAA transaminase and branched-chain ${\alpha}-keto$ acid dehydrogenase in the longissimus dorsi muscle (p<0.05). Conclusion: Using a quadratic model, a SID valine:lysine ratio of 68% was shown to maximize the growth of weaned pigs which is slightly higher than the level recommended by the National Research Council.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.207-228
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• 2007

Measuring Information Technology(IT) organizations' activities have been limited to mainly measure financial indicators for a long time. However, according to the multifarious functions of Information System, a number of researches have been done for the new trends on measurement methodologies that come with financial measurement as well as new measurement methods. Especially, the researches on IT Balanced Scorecard(BSC), concept from BSC measuring IT activities have been done as well in recent years. BSC provides more advantages than only integration of non-financial measures in a performance measurement system. The core of BSC rests on the cause-and-effect relationships between measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures, communication, and realization of the corporate strategy and incentive controlled actions. More recently, BSC proponents have focused on the need to tie measures together into a causal chain of performance, and to test the validity of these hypothesized effects to guide the development of strategy. Kaplan and Norton[2001] argue that one of the primary benefits of the balanced scorecard is its use in gauging the success of strategy. Norreklit[2000] insist that the cause-and-effect chain is central to the balanced scorecard. The cause-and-effect chain is also central to the IT BSC. However, prior researches on relationship between information system and enterprise strategies as well as connection between various IT performance measurement indicators are not so much studied. Ittner et al.[2003] report that 77% of all surveyed companies with an implemented BSC place no or only little interest on soundly modeled cause-and-effect relationships despite of the importance of cause-and-effect chains as an integral part of BSC. This shortcoming can be explained with one theoretical and one practical reason[Blumenberg and Hinz, 2006]. From a theoretical point of view, causalities within the BSC method and their application are only vaguely described by Kaplan and Norton. From a practical consideration, modeling corporate causalities is a complex task due to tedious data acquisition and following reliability maintenance. However, cause-and effect relationships are an essential part of BSCs because they differentiate performance measurement systems like BSCs from simple key performance indicator(KPI) lists. KPI lists present an ad-hoc collection of measures to managers but do not allow for a comprehensive view on corporate performance. Instead, performance measurement system like BSCs tries to model the relationships of the underlying value chain in cause-and-effect relationships. Therefore, to overcome the deficiencies of causal modeling in IT BSC, sound and robust causal modeling approaches are required in theory as well as in practice for offering a solution. The propose of this study is to suggest critical success factors(CSFs) and KPIs for measuring performance for IT organizations and empirically validate the casual relationships between those CSFs. For this purpose, we define four perspectives of BSC for IT organizations according to Van Grembergen's study[2000] as follows. The Future Orientation perspective represents the human and technology resources needed by IT to deliver its services. The Operational Excellence perspective represents the IT processes employed to develop and deliver the applications. The User Orientation perspective represents the user evaluation of IT. The Business Contribution perspective captures the business value of the IT investments. Each of these perspectives has to be translated into corresponding metrics and measures that assess the current situations. This study suggests 12 CSFs for IT BSC based on the previous IT BSC's studies and COBIT 4.1. These CSFs consist of 51 KPIs. We defines the cause-and-effect relationships among BSC CSFs for IT Organizations as follows. The Future Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Operational Excellence perspective. Then the Operational Excellence perspective will have positive effects on the User Orientation perspective. Finally, the User Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Business Contribution perspective. This research tests the validity of these hypothesized casual effects and the sub-hypothesized causal relationships. For the purpose, we used the Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modeling(or PLS Path Modeling) for analyzing multiple IT BSC CSFs. The PLS path modeling has special abilities that make it more appropriate than other techniques, such as multiple regression and LISREL, when analyzing small sample sizes. Recently the use of PLS path modeling has been gaining interests and use among IS researchers in recent years because of its ability to model latent constructs under conditions of nonormality and with small to medium sample sizes(Chin et al., 2003). The empirical results of our study using PLS path modeling show that the casual effects in IT BSC significantly exist partially in our hypotheses.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.325-332
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• 2022

The aim of this research is to use a conceptual model to experimentally evaluate the mediating impact of government financial and training support on structural social capital and non-financial performance of family farms. Questionnaires were used to collect data from family farms in Guangxi, China, from August 25^th to September 8^th, 2021. There were 759 valid responses, accounting for 94.99 percent of the total number of respondents. The scales' reliability and validity, and the research's mediating effects and hypotheses, are tested using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 26.0. The findings suggest that the impact of government financial assistance on family farms' non-financial performance cannot be substantiated. The intermediary chain connection of financial and training support, on the other hand, has a significant mediating effect between structural social capital and family farm non-financial performance. Direct financial assistance could be thought to encourage family farms to rely too much on funding, making them less competitive in market competition, innovation, and long-term operations. According to the conclusions of the study, government assistance to family farms could take a variety of forms, including providing diversified skills training programs in farming practices, managerial skills, and other areas.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.36-42
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• 2008

As competition shifts from being a company oriented one to a supply chain oriented, an effective SCM(supply chain management) becomes a necessary strategy for any successful businesses. But, it is not easy to form a successful SCM, because the individual desire of participants conflict with others. These desires affect the performance of SCM and cause waste of cost and time. Analyzing a supply chain of discount retailers, this paper eliminates idle time and improves the process with rearranging the reorder closing time(reorder point). For win-win strategy, this work reveals the reorder closing time is an important factor. It is possible to reduce cost and time on the entire SCM process by just changing the ordering time.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.39-45
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• 2015

Satellite communication is high-speed large-capacity transmission in such a manner as to communicate with satellites in the chamber, and there is a wide area communication, but is not the security of the information. To compensate for this, AES encryption was applied to the CTR and CBC mode. Also, Blockage channel using a Markov chain to determine the impact caused by obstacles such as trees or buildings between the transmitter and the receiver was composed of Urban and Open Environment. The results of analyzing the performance of satellite communications over a high-speed link-based simulation, If applying encryption, performance of security is complementary but performance of the BER was aggravated and In the Open Environment fewer obstacles confirmed the BER performance is improved than the Urban Environment many obstacles.

• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2012

The cold chain system in South-East Asia is requiring to maintain freshness of refrigerated or frozen food. In this study, Thermal storage system using Phase change material (PCM) was developed and evaluated its performance about temperature and cold keeping time. For various application of cold chain system, we developed portable cold box, cold roll container and freezing station. Keeping time on laboratory tests of portable cold box in case of refrigeration and freezing were 6 hours and 4 hours, respectively. Cold container was developed to 2.5 ton scale. Evaluation in Indonesia, it was showed to keep the setting temperature of $-10^{\circ}C$ over 40 hours at $30^{\circ}C$ of ambient air. Freezing station using PCM was kept over 24 hours under $-20^{\circ}C$.

• IE interfaces
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• v.16 no.spc
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• pp.21-27
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• 2003

Objective of this paper is to develop the user mobility model(UMM) which is used for the performance analysis of location update and paging algorithm and at the same time, consider the user mobility pattern(UMP) in zone-based cellular networks. User mobility pattern shows correlation in space and time. UMM should consider these correlations of UMP. K-dimensional Markov chain is presented as a UMM considering them where the states of Markov chain are defined as the current location area(LA) and the consecutive LAs visited in the path. Also, a new two dimensional Markov chain composed of current LA and time interval is presented. Simulation results show that the appropriate size of K in the former UMM is two and the latter UMM reflects the characteristic of UMP well and so is a good model for the analytic method to solve the performance of location update and paging algorithm.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to compare the water channel morphology and the proton conductivity by changing the number of repeating units of the polymer backbone of PEMs, and to present a criterion for selecting an appropriate polymer model for MD simulation. In the model with the shortest polymer main chain, the movement of the main chain and the sulfonic acid group was observed to be large, but no change in the water channel morphology was found. In addition, due to the nature of the proton transport ability that is most affected by the water channel morphology, the proton conductivity did not show a significant correlation with the length of the polymer backbone. These results provide important information, particularly for the preparation of ionomers for binders. In general, a low molecular weight polymer electrolyte material is used for a binder ionomer. Since the movement of the main chain/sulfonic acid group is improved, it can play a role of enclosing the catalyst layer well. However, there is no change in its proton conducting performance. In conclusion, the preparation of ionomers for binders will require molecular weight and structure design with a focus on physical properties rather than proton transfer performance.