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The Mediating Effect of Experiential Value on Customers' Perceived Value of Digital Content: China's Anti-virus Program Market (경험개치대소비자대전자내용적인지개치적중개영향(经验价值对消费者对电子内容的认知价值的中介影响): 중국살독연건시장(中国杀毒软件市场))

  • Jia, Weiwei;Kim, Sae-Bum
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.219-230
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    • 2010
  • Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

Export Control System based on Case Based Reasoning: Design and Evaluation (사례 기반 지능형 수출통제 시스템 : 설계와 평가)

  • Hong, Woneui;Kim, Uihyun;Cho, Sinhee;Kim, Sansung;Yi, Mun Yong;Shin, Donghoon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.109-131
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    • 2014
  • As the demand of nuclear power plant equipment is continuously growing worldwide, the importance of handling nuclear strategic materials is also increasing. While the number of cases submitted for the exports of nuclear-power commodity and technology is dramatically increasing, preadjudication (or prescreening to be simple) of strategic materials has been done so far by experts of a long-time experience and extensive field knowledge. However, there is severe shortage of experts in this domain, not to mention that it takes a long time to develop an expert. Because human experts must manually evaluate all the documents submitted for export permission, the current practice of nuclear material export is neither time-efficient nor cost-effective. Toward alleviating the problem of relying on costly human experts only, our research proposes a new system designed to help field experts make their decisions more effectively and efficiently. The proposed system is built upon case-based reasoning, which in essence extracts key features from the existing cases, compares the features with the features of a new case, and derives a solution for the new case by referencing similar cases and their solutions. Our research proposes a framework of case-based reasoning system, designs a case-based reasoning system for the control of nuclear material exports, and evaluates the performance of alternative keyword extraction methods (full automatic, full manual, and semi-automatic). A keyword extraction method is an essential component of the case-based reasoning system as it is used to extract key features of the cases. The full automatic method was conducted using TF-IDF, which is a widely used de facto standard method for representative keyword extraction in text mining. TF (Term Frequency) is based on the frequency count of the term within a document, showing how important the term is within a document while IDF (Inverted Document Frequency) is based on the infrequency of the term within a document set, showing how uniquely the term represents the document. The results show that the semi-automatic approach, which is based on the collaboration of machine and human, is the most effective solution regardless of whether the human is a field expert or a student who majors in nuclear engineering. Moreover, we propose a new approach of computing nuclear document similarity along with a new framework of document analysis. The proposed algorithm of nuclear document similarity considers both document-to-document similarity (${\alpha}$) and document-to-nuclear system similarity (${\beta}$), in order to derive the final score (${\gamma}$) for the decision of whether the presented case is of strategic material or not. The final score (${\gamma}$) represents a document similarity between the past cases and the new case. The score is induced by not only exploiting conventional TF-IDF, but utilizing a nuclear system similarity score, which takes the context of nuclear system domain into account. Finally, the system retrieves top-3 documents stored in the case base that are considered as the most similar cases with regard to the new case, and provides them with the degree of credibility. With this final score and the credibility score, it becomes easier for a user to see which documents in the case base are more worthy of looking up so that the user can make a proper decision with relatively lower cost. The evaluation of the system has been conducted by developing a prototype and testing with field data. The system workflows and outcomes have been verified by the field experts. This research is expected to contribute the growth of knowledge service industry by proposing a new system that can effectively reduce the burden of relying on costly human experts for the export control of nuclear materials and that can be considered as a meaningful example of knowledge service application.

Physio-Ecological Studies on Stevia(Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) (스테비아(Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni)에 관한 생리 생태적 연구)

  • Kwang-He Kang;Eun-Woong Lee
    • KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.69-89
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    • 1981
  • Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) is a perennial herb widely distributed in the mountainous area of Paraguay. It belongs to the family Compositae and contains 6 to 12 percent stevioside in the leaves. Stevioside is a glucoside having similar sweetening character to surgar and the degree of sweetness is approximately 300 times of sugar. Since Korea does not produce any sugar crops, and the synthetic sweetenings are potentially hazardous for health, it is rather urgent to develop an economical new sweetener. Consequently, the current experiments are conducted to establish cultural practices of stevia, a new sweetening herbs, introduced into Korea in 1973 and the results are summarized as followings: 1. Days from transplanting of cuttings to the flower bud formation of 6 stevia lines were similar among daylengths of 8, 10 and 12 hours, but it was much greater at daylengths of 14 or 24 hour and varietal differences were noticable. All lines were photosensitive, but a line, 77013, was the most sensitive and 77067 and Suweon 2 were less sensitive to daylength. 2. Critical daylength of all lines seemed to be approximately 12 hours. Growth of plants was severely retarded at daylengths less than 12 hours. 3. Cutting were responded to short daylength before rooting. Number of days from transplanting to flower bud formation of 40-day old cuttings in the nursery bed was 20 days and it was delayed as duration of nursery were shorter. 4. Number of days from emergence to flower bud formation was shortest at short day treatment from 20 days after emergence. It was became longer as initiation of short day treatment was earlier or later than 20 days. 5. Plant height, number of branches, and top dry weight of stevia were reduced as cutting date was delayed from March 20 to May 20. The highest yield of dry leaf was obtained at nursery duration of 40-50 days in march 20 cutting, 30-40 days in April 20 cutting, and 30 days in May 20 cutting. 6. An asymptotic relationship was observed between plant population and leaf dry weight. Yield of dry leaf increased rapidly as plant population increased from 5,000 to 10,000 plants/10a with a reduced increasing rate from 10,000 to 20,000 plants/l0a, and levelled off at the plant population higher than 20,000 plants/l0a. 7. Stevia was adaptable in Suweon, Chengju, Mokpo and Jeju and drought was one of the main factors reducing yield of dry leaf. Yield of dry leaf was reduced significantly (approximately 30%) at June 20 transplanting compared to optimum transplanting. 8. Yield of dry leaf was higher in a vinyl house compared to unprotected control at long daylength or natural daylength except at short day treatment at March 20. Higher temperature ill a vinyl house does not have benefital effects at April 20 transplanting. 9. The highest content of stevioside was noted at the upper leaves of the plant but the lowest was measured at the plant parts of 20cm above ground. Leaf dry weight and stevioside yield was mainly contributed by the plant parts of 60 to 120cm above ground but the varietal differences were also significant. 10. Delayed harvest by the time of flower bud formation increased leaf dry weight remarkably. However, there were insignificant changes of yield as harvests were made at any time after flower bud formation. Content of stevioside was highest at the time of flower bud formation and earlier or later harvest than this time was low in its content. The optimum harvesting time determined by leaf dry weight and stevioside content was the periods from flower bud formation to right before flowering that would be the period from September 10 to September 15 in Suweon area. 11. Stevioside and rebaudioside content in the leaves of Stevia varieties were ranged from 5.4% to 14.3% and 1.5% to 8.3% respectively. However, no definit relationships between stevioside and rebaudioside were observed in these particular experiments.

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Studies on Nutrio-physiological Response of Rice Plant to Root Environment (근부환경(根部環境)에 따른 수도(水稻)의 영양생리적(營養生理的) 반응(反應)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究))

  • Park, J.K.;Kim, Y.S.;Oh, W.K.;Park, H.;Yazawa, F.
    • Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.53-68
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    • 1969
  • The nutriophysiological response of rice plant to root environment was investigated with eye observation of root development and rhizosphere in situation. The results may be summarized as follows: 1) The quick decomposition of organic matter, added in low yield soil, caused that the origainal organic matter content was reached very quickly, in spite of it low value. In high yield soil the reverse was seen. 2) In low yield soil root development, root activity and T/R value were very low, whereas addition of organic matter lowered them still wore. This might be contributed to gas bubbles around the root by the decomposition of organic matter. 3) Varietal difference in the response to root environment was clear. Suwon 82 was more susceptible to growth-inhibitine conditions on low-yield soil than Norin 25. 4) Potassium uptake was mostly hindered by organic matter, while some factors in soil hindered mostly posphorus uptake. When the organic matter was added to such soil, the effect of them resulted in multiple interaction. 5) The root activity showed a correlation coeffieient of 0.839, 0.834 and 0.948 at 1% level with the number of root, yield of aerial part and root yield, respectively. At 5% level the root-activity showed correlation-coefficient of 0.751, 0.670 and 0.769 with the uptake of the aerial part of respectively. N, P and K and a correlation-coefficient of 0.729, 0.742 and 0.815 with the uptake of the root of respectively N.P. and K. So especially for K-uptake a high correlation with the root-activity was found. 6) The nitrogen content of the roots in low-yield soil was higher than in high-yield soil, while the content in the upper part showed the reverse. It may suggest ammonium toxicity in the root. In low-yield soil Potassium and Phosphorus content was low in both the root and aerial part, and in the latter particularly in the culm and leaf sheath. 7) The content of reducing sugar, non-recuding sugar, starh and eugar, total carbohydrates in the aerial part of plants in low yield soil was higher than in high yield soil. The content of them, especially of reducing sugar in the roots was lower. It may be caused by abnormal metabolic consumption of sugar in the root. 8) Sulfur content was very high in the aerial part, especially in leaf blade of plants on low yield soil and $P_2O_5/S$ value of the leaf blade was one fifth of that in high yield soil. It suggests a possible toxic effect of sulfate ion on photophosphorization. 9) The high value of $Fe/P_2O_5$ of the aerial part of plants in low yield soil suggests the possible formation of solid $Fe/PO_4$ as a mechanical hindrance for the translocation of nutrients. 10) Translocation of nutrients in the plant was very poor and most nutrients were accumulated in the root in low yield soil. That might contributed to the lack of energy sources and mechanical hindrance. 11) The amount of roots in high yield soil, was greater than that in low yield soil. The in high-yield soil was deep, distribution of the roots whereas in the low-yield soil the root-distribution was mainly in the top-layer. Without application of Nitrogen fertilizer the roots were mainly distributed in the upper 7cm. of topsoil. With 120 kg N/ha. root were more concentrated in the layer between 7cm. and 14cm. depth. The amount of roots increased with the amount of fertilizer applied.

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Emoticon by Emotions: The Development of an Emoticon Recommendation System Based on Consumer Emotions (Emoticon by Emotions: 소비자 감성 기반 이모티콘 추천 시스템 개발)

  • Kim, Keon-Woo;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.227-252
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    • 2018
  • The evolution of instant communication has mirrored the development of the Internet and messenger applications are among the most representative manifestations of instant communication technologies. In messenger applications, senders use emoticons to supplement the emotions conveyed in the text of their messages. The fact that communication via messenger applications is not face-to-face makes it difficult for senders to communicate their emotions to message recipients. Emoticons have long been used as symbols that indicate the moods of speakers. However, at present, emoticon-use is evolving into a means of conveying the psychological states of consumers who want to express individual characteristics and personality quirks while communicating their emotions to others. The fact that companies like KakaoTalk, Line, Apple, etc. have begun conducting emoticon business and sales of related content are expected to gradually increase testifies to the significance of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, despite the development of emoticons themselves and the growth of the emoticon market, no suitable emoticon recommendation system has yet been developed. Even KakaoTalk, a messenger application that commands more than 90% of domestic market share in South Korea, just grouped in to popularity, most recent, or brief category. This means consumers face the inconvenience of constantly scrolling around to locate the emoticons they want. The creation of an emoticon recommendation system would improve consumer convenience and satisfaction and increase the sales revenue of companies the sell emoticons. To recommend appropriate emoticons, it is necessary to quantify the emotions that the consumer sees and emotions. Such quantification will enable us to analyze the characteristics and emotions felt by consumers who used similar emoticons, which, in turn, will facilitate our emoticon recommendations for consumers. One way to quantify emoticons use is metadata-ization. Metadata-ization is a means of structuring or organizing unstructured and semi-structured data to extract meaning. By structuring unstructured emoticon data through metadata-ization, we can easily classify emoticons based on the emotions consumers want to express. To determine emoticons' precise emotions, we had to consider sub-detail expressions-not only the seven common emotional adjectives but also the metaphorical expressions that appear only in South Korean proved by previous studies related to emotion focusing on the emoticon's characteristics. We therefore collected the sub-detail expressions of emotion based on the "Shape", "Color" and "Adumbration". Moreover, to design a highly accurate recommendation system, we considered both emotion-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional indexes. We then identified 14 features of emoticon-technical indexes and selected 36 emotional adjectives. The 36 emotional adjectives consisted of contrasting adjectives, which we reduced to 18, and we measured the 18 emotional adjectives using 40 emoticon sets randomly selected from the top-ranked emoticons in the KakaoTalk shop. We surveyed 277 consumers in their mid-twenties who had experience purchasing emoticons; we recruited them online and asked them to evaluate five different emoticon sets. After data acquisition, we conducted a factor analysis of emoticon-emotional factors. We extracted four factors that we named "Comic", Softness", "Modernity" and "Transparency". We analyzed both the relationship between indexes and consumer attitude and the relationship between emoticon-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional factors. Through this process, we confirmed that the emoticon-technical indexes did not directly affect consumer attitudes but had a mediating effect on consumer attitudes through emoticon-emotional factors. The results of the analysis revealed the mechanism consumers use to evaluate emoticons; the results also showed that consumers' emoticon-technical indexes affected emoticon-emotional factors and that the emoticon-emotional factors affected consumer satisfaction. We therefore designed the emoticon recommendation system using only four emoticon-emotional factors; we created a recommendation method to calculate the Euclidean distance from each factors' emotion. In an attempt to increase the accuracy of the emoticon recommendation system, we compared the emotional patterns of selected emoticons with the recommended emoticons. The emotional patterns corresponded in principle. We verified the emoticon recommendation system by testing prediction accuracy; the predictions were 81.02% accurate in the first result, 76.64% accurate in the second, and 81.63% accurate in the third. This study developed a methodology that can be used in various fields academically and practically. We expect that the novel emoticon recommendation system we designed will increase emoticon sales for companies who conduct business in this domain and make consumer experiences more convenient. In addition, this study served as an important first step in the development of an intelligent emoticon recommendation system. The emotional factors proposed in this study could be collected in an emotional library that could serve as an emotion index for evaluation when new emoticons are released. Moreover, by combining the accumulated emotional library with company sales data, sales information, and consumer data, companies could develop hybrid recommendation systems that would bolster convenience for consumers and serve as intellectual assets that companies could strategically deploy.

Soil Classification of Paddy Soils by Soil Taxonomy (미국신분류법(美國新分類法)에 의(依)한 답토양의 분류(分類)에 관한 연구)

  • Joo, Yeong-Hee;Shin, Yong-Hwa
    • Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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    • v.11 no.2
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    • pp.97-104
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    • 1979
  • According to Soil Taxonomy which has been developed over the past 20 years in the soil conservation service of the U. S. D. A, Soils in Korea are classified. This system is well suited for the classification of the most of soils. But paddy field soils have some difficulties in classification because Soil Taxonomy states no proposals have yet been developed for classifying artificially irrigated soils. This paper discusses some problems in the application of Taxonomy and suggestes the classification of paddy field soils in Korea. Following is the summary of the paper. 1. Anthro aquic, Aquic Udipsamments : The top soils of these soils are saturated with irrigated water at some time of year and have mottles of low chroma(2 or less) more than 50cm of the soil surface. (Ex. Sadu, Geumcheon series) 2. Anthroaquic Udipsamments : These sails are like Anthroaquic, Aquic Udipsamments except for the mottles of low chroma within 50cm of the soil surface. (Ex. Baegsu series) 3. Halic Psammaquents : These soils contain enough salts as distributed in the profile that they interfere with the growth of most crop plants and located on the coastal dunes. The water table fluctuates with the tides. (Ex. Nagcheon series) 4. Anthroaquic, Aquic Udifluvents : They have some mottles that have chroma of 2 or less in more than 50cm of the surface. The upper horizon is saturated with irrigated water at sometime. (Ex. Maryeong series) 5. Anthro aquic Udifluvents : These soils are saturated with irrigated water at some time of year and have mottles of low chroma(2 or less) within 50cm of the surface soils. (Ex. Haenggog series) 6. Fluventic Haplaquepts : These soils have a content of organic carbon that decreases irregularly with depth and do not have an argillic horizon in any part of the pedon. Since ground water occur on the surface or near the surface, they are dominantly gray soils in a thick mineral regolith. (Ex Baeggu, Hagseong series) 7. Fluventic Thapto-Histic Haplaquepts : These soils have a buried organic matter layer and the upper boundary is within 1m of the surface. Other properties are same as Fluventic Haplaquepts. (Ex. Gongdeog, Seotan series) 8. Fluventic Aeric Haplaquepts : These soils have a horizon that has chroma too high for Fluventic Haplaquepts. The higher chroma is thought to indicate either a shorter period of saturation of the whole soils with water or some what deeper ground water than in the Fluventic Haplaquepts. The correlation of color with soil drainage classes is imperfect. (Ex. Mangyeong, Jeonbug series) 9. Fluventic Thapto-Histic Aeric Haplaquepts : These soils are similar to Fluventic Thapto Histic Haplaquepts except for the deeper ground water. (Ex. Bongnam series) 10. Fluventic Aeric Sulfic Haplaquepts : These soils are similar to Fluventic Aeric Haplaquepts except for the yellow mottles and low pH (<4.0) in some part between 50 and 150cm of the surface. (Ex. Deunggu series) 11. Fluventic Sulfaquepts : These soils are extremely acid and toxic to most plant. Their horizons are mostly dark gray and have yellow mottles of iron sulfate with in 50cm of the soil surface. They occur mainly in coastal marshes near the mouth of rivers. (Ex. Bongrim, Haecheog series) 12. Fluventic Aeric Sulfaquepts : They have a horizon that has chroma too high for Fluventic Sulfaquepts. Other properties are same as Fluventic Sulfaquepts. (Ex. Gimhae series) 13. Anthroaquic Fluvaquentic Eutrochrepts : These soils have mottles of low chroma in more than 50cm of the surface due to irrigated water. The base saturation is 60 percent or more in some subhroizon that is between depth of 25 and 75cm below the surface. (Ex. Jangyu, Chilgog series) 14. Anthroaquic Dystric Fluventic Eutrochrepts : These soils are similar to Anthroaquic Fluvaquentic Eutrochrepts except for the low chroma within 50cm of the surface. (Ex. Weolgog, Gyeongsan series) 15. Anthroaquic Fluventic Dystrochrepts : These soils have mottles that have chroma of 2 or less within 50cm of the soil surface due to artificial irrigation. They have lower base saturation (<60 percert) in all subhorizons between depths of 25 and 75cm below the soil surface. (Ex. Gocheon, Bigog series) 16. Anthro aquic Eutrandepts : These soils are similar to Anthroaquic Dystric Fluventic Eutrochrepts except for lower bulk density in the horizon. (Ex. Daejeong series) 17. Anthroaquic Hapludalfs : These soils' have a surface that is saturated with irrigated water at some time and have chroma of 2 or less in the matrix and higher chroma of mottles within 50cm of the surface. (Ex. Hwadong, Yongsu series) 18. Anthro aquic, Aquic Hapludalfs : These soils are similar to Anthro aquic Hapludalfs except for the matrix that has chroma 2 or less and higher chroma of mottles in more than 50cm of the surface. (Ex. Geugrag, Deogpyeong se ries)

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Incorporating Social Relationship discovered from User's Behavior into Collaborative Filtering (사용자 행동 기반의 사회적 관계를 결합한 사용자 협업적 여과 방법)

  • Thay, Setha;Ha, Inay;Jo, Geun-Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.1-20
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    • 2013
  • Nowadays, social network is a huge communication platform for providing people to connect with one another and to bring users together to share common interests, experiences, and their daily activities. Users spend hours per day in maintaining personal information and interacting with other people via posting, commenting, messaging, games, social events, and applications. Due to the growth of user's distributed information in social network, there is a great potential to utilize the social data to enhance the quality of recommender system. There are some researches focusing on social network analysis that investigate how social network can be used in recommendation domain. Among these researches, we are interested in taking advantages of the interaction between a user and others in social network that can be determined and known as social relationship. Furthermore, mostly user's decisions before purchasing some products depend on suggestion of people who have either the same preferences or closer relationship. For this reason, we believe that user's relationship in social network can provide an effective way to increase the quality in prediction user's interests of recommender system. Therefore, social relationship between users encountered from social network is a common factor to improve the way of predicting user's preferences in the conventional approach. Recommender system is dramatically increasing in popularity and currently being used by many e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, Last.fm, eBay.com, etc. Collaborative filtering (CF) method is one of the essential and powerful techniques in recommender system for suggesting the appropriate items to user by learning user's preferences. CF method focuses on user data and generates automatic prediction about user's interests by gathering information from users who share similar background and preferences. Specifically, the intension of CF method is to find users who have similar preferences and to suggest target user items that were mostly preferred by those nearest neighbor users. There are two basic units that need to be considered by CF method, the user and the item. Each user needs to provide his rating value on items i.e. movies, products, books, etc to indicate their interests on those items. In addition, CF uses the user-rating matrix to find a group of users who have similar rating with target user. Then, it predicts unknown rating value for items that target user has not rated. Currently, CF has been successfully implemented in both information filtering and e-commerce applications. However, it remains some important challenges such as cold start, data sparsity, and scalability reflected on quality and accuracy of prediction. In order to overcome these challenges, many researchers have proposed various kinds of CF method such as hybrid CF, trust-based CF, social network-based CF, etc. In the purpose of improving the recommendation performance and prediction accuracy of standard CF, in this paper we propose a method which integrates traditional CF technique with social relationship between users discovered from user's behavior in social network i.e. Facebook. We identify user's relationship from behavior of user such as posts and comments interacted with friends in Facebook. We believe that social relationship implicitly inferred from user's behavior can be likely applied to compensate the limitation of conventional approach. Therefore, we extract posts and comments of each user by using Facebook Graph API and calculate feature score among each term to obtain feature vector for computing similarity of user. Then, we combine the result with similarity value computed using traditional CF technique. Finally, our system provides a list of recommended items according to neighbor users who have the biggest total similarity value to the target user. In order to verify and evaluate our proposed method we have performed an experiment on data collected from our Movies Rating System. Prediction accuracy evaluation is conducted to demonstrate how much our algorithm gives the correctness of recommendation to user in terms of MAE. Then, the evaluation of performance is made to show the effectiveness of our method in terms of precision, recall, and F1-measure. Evaluation on coverage is also included in our experiment to see the ability of generating recommendation. The experimental results show that our proposed method outperform and more accurate in suggesting items to users with better performance. The effectiveness of user's behavior in social network particularly shows the significant improvement by up to 6% on recommendation accuracy. Moreover, experiment of recommendation performance shows that incorporating social relationship observed from user's behavior into CF is beneficial and useful to generate recommendation with 7% improvement of performance compared with benchmark methods. Finally, we confirm that interaction between users in social network is able to enhance the accuracy and give better recommendation in conventional approach.

Ecological Changes of Insect-damaged Pinus densiflora Stands in the Southern Temperate Forest Zone of Korea (I) (솔잎혹파리 피해적송림(被害赤松林)의 생태학적(生態学的) 연구(研究) (I))

  • Yim, Kyong Bin;Lee, Kyong Jae;Kim, Yong Shik
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.52 no.1
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    • pp.58-71
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    • 1981
  • Thecodiplosis japonesis is sweeping the Pinus densiflora forests from south-west to north-east direction, destroying almost all the aged large trees as well as even the young ones. The front line of infestation is moving slowly but ceaselessly norhwards as a long bottle front. Estimation is that more than 40 percent of the area of P. densiflora forest has been damaged already, however some individuals could escapes from the damage and contribute to restore the site to the previous vegetation composition. When the stands were attacked by this insect, the drastic openings of the upper story of tree canopy formed by exclusively P. densiflora are usually resulted and some environmental factors such as light, temperature, litter accumulation, soil moisture and offers were naturally modified. With these changes after insect invasion, as the time passes, phytosociologic changes of the vegetation are gradually proceeding. If we select the forest according to four categories concerning the history of the insect outbreak, namely, non-attacked (healthy forest), recently damaged (the outbreak occured about 1-2 years ago), severely damaged (occured 5-6 years ago), damage prolonged (occured 10 years ago) and restored (occured about 20 years ago), any directional changes of vegetation composition could be traced these in line with four progressive stages. To elucidate these changes, three survey districts; (1) "Gongju" where the damage was severe and it was outbroken in 1977, (2) "Buyeo" where damage prolonged and (3) "Gochang" as restored, were set, (See Tab. 1). All these were located in the south temperate forest zone which was delimited mainly due to the temporature factor and generally accepted without any opposition at present. In view of temperature, the amount and distribution of precipitation and various soil factor, the overall homogeneity of environmental conditions between survey districts might be accepted. However this did not mean that small changes of edaphic and topographic conditions and microclimates can induce any alteration of vegetation patterns. Again four survey plots were set in each district and inter plot distance was 3 to 4 km. And again four subplots were set within a survey plot. The size of a subplot was $10m{\times}10m$ for woody vegetation and $5m{\times}5m$ for ground cover vegetation which was less than 2 m high. The nested quadrat method was adopted. In sampling survey plots, the followings were taken into account: (1) Natural growth having more than 80 percent of crown density of upper canopy and more than 5 hectares of area. (2) Was not affected by both natural and artificial disturbances such as fire and thinning operation for the past three decades. (3) Lower than 500 m of altitude (4) Less than 20 degrees of slope, and (5) Northerly sited aspect. An intensive vegetation survey was undertaken during the summer of 1980. The vegetation was devided into 3 categories for sampling; the upper layer (dominated mainly by the pine trees), the middle layer composed by oak species and other broad-leaved trees as well as the pine, and the ground layer or the lower layer (shrubby form of woody plants). In this study our survey was concentrated on woody species only. For the vegetation analysis, calculated were values of intensity, frequency, covers, relative importance, species diversity, dominance and similarity and dissimilasity index when importance values were calculated, different relative weights as score were arbitrarily given to each layer, i.e., 3 points for the upper layer, 2 for the middle layer and 1 for the ground layer. Then the formula becomes as follows; $$R.I.V.=\frac{3(IV\;upper\;L.)+2(IV.\;middle\;L.)+1(IV.\;ground\;L.)}{6}$$ The values of Similarity Index were calculated on the basis of the Relative Importance Value of trees (sum of relative density, frequency and cover). The formula used is; $$S.I.=\frac{2C}{S_1+S_2}{\times}100=\frac{2C}{100+100}{\times}100=C(%)$$ Where: C = The sum of the lower of the two quantitative values for species shared by the two communities. $S_1$ = The sum of all values for the first community. $S_2$ = The sum of all values for the second community. In Tab. 3, the species composition of each plot by layer and by district is presented. Without exception, the species formed the upper layer of stands was Pinus densiflora. As seen from the table, the relative cover (%), density (number of tree per $500m^2$), the range of height and diameter at brest height and cone bearing tendency were given. For the middle layer, Quercus spp. (Q. aliena, serrata, mongolica, accutissina and variabilis) and Pinus densiflora were dominating ones. Genus Rhodedendron and Lespedeza were abundant in ground vegetation, but some oaks were involved also. (1) Gongju district The total of woody species appeared in this district was 26 and relative importance value of Pinus densiflora for the upper layer was 79.1%, but in the middle layer, the R.I.V. for Quercus acctissima, Pinus densiflora, and Quercus aliena, were 22.8%, 18.7% and 10.0%, respectively, and in ground vegetation Q. mongolica 17.0%, Q. serrata 16.8% Corylus heterophylla 11.8%, and Q. dentata 11.3% in order. (2) Buyeo district. The number of species enumerated in this district was 36 and the R.I.V. of Pinus densiflora for the uppper layer was 100%. In the middle layer, the R.I.V. of Q. variabilis and Q. serrata were 8.6% and 8.5% respectively. In the ground vegetative 24 species were counted which had no more than 5% of R.I.V. The mean R.I.V. of P.densiflora ( totaling three layers ) and averaging four plots was 57.7% in contrast to 46.9% for Gongju district. (3) Gochang-district The total number of woody species was 23 and the mean R.I.V. of Pinus densiflora was 66.0% showing greater value than those for two former districts. The next high value was 6.5% for Q. serrata. As the time passes since insect outbreak, the mean R.I.V. of P. densiflora increased as the following order, 46.9%, 57.7% and 66%. This implies that P. densiflora was getting back to its original dominat state again. The pooled importance of Genus Quercus was decreasing with the increase of that for Pinus densiflora. This trend was contradict to the facts which were surveyed at Kyonggi-do area (the central temperate forest zone) reported previously (Yim et al, 1980). Among Genus Quercus, Quercus acutissina, warm-loving species, was more abundant in the southern temperature zone to which the present research is concerned than the central temperate zone. But vice-versa was true with Q. mongolica, a cold-loving one. The species which are not common between the present survey and the previous report are Corpinus cordata, Beltala davurica, Wisturia floribunda, Weigela subsessilis, Gleditsia japonica var. koraiensis, Acer pseudosieboldianum, Euonymus japonica var. macrophylla, Ribes mandshuricum, Pyrus calleryana var. faruiei, Tilia amurensis and Pyrus pyrifolia. In Figure 4 and Table 5, Maximum species diversity (maximum H'), Species diversity (H') and Eveness (J') were presented. The Similarity indices between districts were shown in Tab. 5. Seeing Fig. 6, showing two-dimensional ordination of polts on the basis of X and Y coordinates, Ai plots aggregate at the left site, Bi plots at lower site, and Ci plots at upper-right site. The increasing and decreasing patterns as to Relative Density and Relative Importance Value by genus or species were given in Fig. 7. Some of the patterns presented here are not consistent with the previously reported ones (Yim, et al, 1980). The present authors would like to attribute this fact that two distinct types of the insect attack, one is the short war type occuring in the south temperate forest zone, which means that insect attack went for a few years only, the other one is a long-drawn was type observed at the temperate forest zone in which the insect damage went on continuously for several years. These different behaviours of infestation might have resulted the different ways of vegetational change. Analysing the similarity indices between districts, the very convincing results come out that the value of dissimilarity index between A and B was 30%, 27% between B and C and 35% between A and C (Table 6). The range of similarity index was obtained from the calculation of every possible combinations of plots between two districts. Longer time isolation between communities has brought the higher value of dissimilarity index. The main components of ground vegetation, 10 to 20 years after insect outbreak, become to be consisted of mainly Genus Lespedeza and Rhododendron. Genus Quercus which relate to the top dorminant state for a while after insect attack was giving its place to Pinus densiflora. It was implied that, provided that the soil fertility, soil moisture and soil depth were good enough, Genus Quercuss had never been so easily taken ever by the resistant speeies like Pinus densiflora which forms the edaphic climax at vast areas of forest land. Usually they refer Quercus to the representative component of the undisturbed natural forest in the central part of this country.

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Studies on the Internal Changes and Germinability during the Period of Seed Maturation of Pinus koraiensis Sieb. et Zucc. (잣나무 종자(種字) 성숙과정(成熟過程)에 있어서의 내적변화(內的變化)와 발아력(發芽力)에 대(對)한 연구(硏究))

  • Min, Kyung-Hyun
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.1-34
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    • 1974
  • The author intended to investigate external and internal changes in the cone structure, changes in water content, sugar, fat and protein during the period of seed maturation which bears a proper germinability. The experimental results can be summarized as in the following. 1. Male flowers 1) Pollen-mother cells occur as a mass from late in April to early in May, and form pollen tetrads through meiosis early and middle of May. Pollen with simple nucleus reach maturity late in May. 2) Stamen number of a male flower is almost same as the scale number of cone and is 69-102 stamens. One stamen includes 5800-7300 pollen. 3) The shape is round and elliptical, both of a pollen has air-sac with $80-91{\mu}$ in length, and has cuticlar exine and cellulose intine. 4) Pollen germinate in 68 hours at $25^{\circ}C$ with distilled water of pH 6.0, 2% sugar and 0.8% agar. 2. Female flowers 1) Ovuliferous scales grow rapidly in late April, and differentiation of ovules begins early in May. Embryo-sac-mother cells produce pollen tetrads through meiosis in the middle of May, and flower in late May. 2) The pollinated female flowers show repeated divisions of embryo-sac nucleus, and a great number of free nuclei form a mass for overwintering. Morphogenesis of isolation in the mass structure takes place from the middle of March, and that forms albuminous bodies of aivealus in early May. 3. Formation of pollinators and embryos. 1) Archegonia produce archegonial initial cells in the middle and late April, and pollinators are produced in the late April and late in early May. 2) After pollination, Oespore nuclei are seen to divide in the late May forming a layer of suspensor from the diaphragm in early June and in the middle of June. Thus this happens to show 4 pro-embryos. The organ of embryos begins to differentiate 1 pro-embryo and reachs perfect maturation in late August. 4. The growth of cones 1) In the year of flowering, strobiles grow during the period from the middle of June to the middle of July, and do not grow after the middle of August. Strobiles grow 1.6 times more in length 3.3 times short in diameter and about 22 times more weight than those of female flower in the year of flowering. 2) The cones at the adult stage grow 7 times longer in diameter, 12-15 times shorter diameter than those of strobiles after flowering. 3) Cone has 96-133 scales with the ratio of scale to be 69-80% and the length of cone is 11-13cm. Diameter is 5-8cm with 160-190g weight, and the seed number of it is 90-150 having empty seed ratio of 8-15%. 5. Formation of seed-coats 1) The layers of outer seed-coat become most for the width of $703{\mu}$ in the middle of July. At the adult stage of seed, it becomes $550-580{\mu}$ in size by decreasing moisture content. Then a horny and the cortical tissue of outer coats become differentiated. 2) The outer seed-coat of mature seeds forms epidermal cells of 3-4 layers and the stone cells of 16-21 layers. The interior part of it becomes parenchyma layer of 1 or 2 rows. 3) Inner seed-coat is formed 2 months earlier than the outer seed-coat in the middle of May, having the most width of inner seed-coat $667{\mu}$. At the adult stage it loses to $80-90{\mu}$. 6. Change in moisture content After pollination moisture content becomes gradually increased at the top in the early June and becomes markedly decreased in the middle of August. At the adult stage it shows 43~48% in cone, 23~25% in the outer seed-coat, 32~37% in the inner seed-coat, 23~26% in the inner seed-coat and endosperm and embryo, 21~24% in the embryo and endosperm, 36~40% in the embryos. 7. The content compositions of seed 1) Fat contents become gradually increased after the early May, at the adult stage it occupies 65~85% more fat than walnut and palm. Embryo includes 78.8% fat, and 57.0% fat in endosperm. 2) Sugar content after pollination becomes greatly increased as in the case of reducing sugar, while non-reducing sugar becomes increased in the early June. 3) Crude protein content becomes gradually increased after the early May, and at the adult stage it becomes 48.8%. Endosperm is made up with more protein than embryo. 8. The test of germination The collected optimum period of Pinus koraiensis seeds at an adequate maturity was collected in the early September, and used for the germination test of reduction-method and embryo culture. Seeds were taken at the interval of 7 days from the middle of July to the middle of September for the germination test at germination apparatus.

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Studies on Ecological Variation and Inheritance for Agronomical Characters of Sweet Sorghum Varieties (Sorghum vulgare PERS) in Korea (단수수(Sorghum vulgare PERS) 품종의 생태변이 및 유용형질의 유전에 관한 연구)

  • Se-Ho Son
    • KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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    • v.10
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    • pp.1-43
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    • 1971
  • Experiment I: The objective of this study was to know variation in some selected agronomic characters of sweet sorghum when planted in several growing seasons. The 17 different sweet sorghum varieties having various maturities, and plant, syrup and sugar types were used in this study which had been carried out for the period of two years from 1968 to 1969 at Industrial Crops Division of Crop Experiment Station in Suwon. These varieties were planted at an interval of 20 days from April 5 to August 25 both in 1968 and 1969. The experimental results could be summarized as follows: 1. As planting was made early, the number of days from sowing to germination was getting prolonged while germination took place early when planted at the later date of which air temperature was relatively higher. However, such a tendency was not observed beyond the planting on August 25. In general, a significant negative correlation was found between the number of days from sowing to germination and the average daily temperature but a positive correlation was found between the former and the total accumulated average temperature during the growth period. 2. The period from sowing to heading was generally shortened as planting was getting delayed. The average varietal difference in number of days from sowing to heading was as much as 30.2 days. All the varieties were grouped into early-, medium and late-maturing groups based upon a difference of 10 days in heading. The average number of days from sowing to heading was 78.5$\pm$4.5 days in the early-maturing varieties, 88.5$\pm$4.5 days in the medium varieties and 98.5$\pm$4.5 days in the late-maturing varieties, respectively. The early-maturing varieties had the shortest period to heading when planted from July 15 to August 5, the medium varieties did when planted before July 15 and the late-maturing varieties did when planted before June 5. 3. The relationship between the sowing date (x) and number of days from sowing to heading could be expressed in an equation of y=a+bx. A highly positive correlation was found between the coefficient of the equation(shortening rate in heading time) and the average number of days from sowing to heading. 4. The number of days from sowing to heading was shortened as the daily average temperature during the growth period was getting higher. Early-maturing varieties had the shortest period to heading at a temperature of 24.2$^{\circ}C$, medium varieties at 23.8$^{\circ}C$ and late-maturing varieties at 22.9$^{\circ}C$, respectively. In other words, the number of days from sowing to heading was shortened rapidly in case that the average temperature for 30 days before heading was 22$^{\circ}C$ to $25^{\circ}C$. It prolonged relatively when the temperature was lower than 21$^{\circ}C$. 5. There was a little difference in plant height among varieties. In case of early planting, no noticeable difference in the height was observed. The plant height shortened generally as planting season was delayed. Elongation of plant height was remarkably accelerated as planting was delayed. This tendency was more pronounced in case of early-maturing varieties rather than late-maturing varieties. As a result, the difference in plant height between the maximum and the minimum was greater in late-maturing varieties than in early-maturing varieties. 6. Diameter of the stalk was getting thicker as planted earlier in late-maturing varieties. On the other hand, medium or early-maturing varieties had he thickest diameter when they were planted on April 25. 7. In general, a higher stalk yield was obtained when planted from April 25 to May 15. However, the planting time for the maximum stalk yield varied from one variety to another depending upon maturity of variety. Ear]y-maturing varieties produced the maximum yield when planted about April 25, medium varieties from April 25 to May 15 and late-maturing varieties did when planted from April 5 to May 15 respectively. The yield decreased linearly when they were planted later than the above dates. 8. A varietal difference in Brix % was also observed. The Brix % decreased linearly when the varieties were planted later than May 15. Therefore, a highly negative relationship between planting date(x) and Brix %(y) was detected. 9. The Brix % during 40 to 45 days after leading was the highest at the 1st to the 3rd internodes from the top while it decreased gradually from the 4th internode. It increased again somewhat at the 2nd internode from the ground level. However, it showed a reverse relationship between the Brix % and position of internode before heading. 10. Sugar content in stalk decreased gradually as planting was getting delayed though one variety differed from another. It seemed that sweet sorghum which planted later than June had no value as a sugar crop at all. 11. The Brix % and sugar content in stalk increased from heading and reached the maximum 40 to 45 days after heading. The percentage of purity showed the same tendency as the mentioned characters. Accordingly, a highly positive correlation was observed between. percentage of purity and Brix % or sugar content in stalk. 12. The highest refinable sugar yield was obtained from the planting on April 25 in late-maturing varieties and from that on May 15 in early-maturing varieties. The yield rapidly decreased when planted later than those dates. Such a negative correlation between planting date(x) and refinable sugar yield(y) was highly significant at 1% level. 13. Negative correlations or linear regressions between delayed planting and the number of days from sowing to germination. accumulated temperature during germination period, number of days to heading, accumulated temperature to heading, plant height, stem diameter, stalk weight, Brix %. sugar content, refinable sugar yield or Purity % were obtained. On the other hand, highly positive correlations between the number of days from sowing to heading(x) and Brix %, sugar content, purity %, refinable sugar yield, plant height or stalk yield, between Brix %(x) and purity %, refinable sugar yield or stalk yield, between sugar content(x) and purity% or refinable sugar yield(y), between purity %(x) and refinable sugar yield and between daylength at heading(x) and Brix %. number of days from sowing to heading, sugar content, purity % or refinable sugar yield (y), were found, respectively. Experiment II: The 11 varieties were selected out of the varieties used in Experiment I from ecological and genetic viewpoints. Complete diallel cross were made among them and the heading date, stalk length, stalk yield, Brix %, syrup yield, combining ability and genetic behavior of F$_1$ plants and their parental varieties were investigated. The results could be summarized as follows: 1. In general, number of days to heading showed a partial dominance over earliness or late maturity or had a mid-value, though there were some specific combinations showing a complete dominance or transgressive segregation in maturity. Some combinations showed relatively high general or specific combining abilities in maturity. Therefore, a 50 to 50 segregation ratio in heading date could be estimated in this study and it might be positive to have a selection in early generation since heritability of the character was relatively high. 2. A vigorous hybrid vigor was observed in stalk length. A complete or partial dominant effect of long stalk was obtained. The general combining ability and specific combining ability of stalk length were generally high. Long and short stalks segregated in a ratio of 50:50 and its heritability was relatively low. 3. Except for several specific combinations, high stalk yield seemed to be partial dominant over the low yield. Some varieties demonstrated relatively high general as well as specific combining abilities. It was assumed that several recessive genes were involved in expression of this character. The interaction among regulating recessive genes was also obtained. Accordingly, the heritability of stalk yield seemed to be rather low. 4. The Brix % of hybrid plants located around mid-parental value though some of them showed much higher or lower percentage. It could be explained by the fact that such behavior might be due to partial dominance of Brix %. The varieties with, relatively higher Brix % were high both in general. and specific combining abilities. Therefore, it could be recommended to use the varieties having higher sugar content in order to develop higher-sugar varieties. 5. The syrup yield seemed to be transgressively segregated or completely dominant over low yield. Hybrid vigor of syrup yield was relatively high. No-consistent relationship between general combining ability and specific combining ability was observed. However, some cases demonstrated that the varieties with relatively higher general combining ability had relatively lower specific combining ability. It was assumed that the frequencies of dominant and recessive alleles were almost same.

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