• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.451-458
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• 2016

Since Modigliani and Miller developed their theory of capital structure in 1958, it has become one of the most debated issues in corporate management. This is because the capital structure decision necessarily affects financial risk and the firm's value. Throughout the research, one of the most concerning problems is determining what factors influence the firm's capital structure. Since Korean shipping firms have been suffering from a long term economic recession, an optimal capital structure has become increasingly critical to survive in the shipping industry. This paper studies panel data on 46 Korean shipping companies since 2000 to find the factors that affect capital structure. The results suggest that a negative relationship arises between firm size, tangible assets, profitability and non-debt tax shields against leverage. Otherwise, it proved that growth opportunity has a positive relationship with the firm's leverage. In the research model during a booming shipping economy, growth opportunity and non-debt tax shield are not associated with firm's capital structure.

• BMB Reports
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.79-84
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• 2012

In asthma, T helper 2 (TH2)-type cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-4, IL-5, and IL-13 are produced by activated $CD^{4+}$ T cells. Dendritic cells played an important role in determining the fate of naive T cells into either $T_H1$ or $T_H2$ cells. We determined whether RG-II regulates the $T_H1/T_H2$ immune response by using an ovalbumin-induced murine model of asthma. RG-II reduced IL-4 production but increased interferon-gamma production, and inhibited GATA-3 gene expression. RG-II also inhibited asthmatic reactions including an increase in the number of eosinophils in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, an increase in inflammatory cell infiltration in lung tissues, airway luminal narrowing, and airway hyperresponsiveness. This study provides evidence that RG-II plays a critical role in ameliorating the pathogenic process of asthmatic inflammation in mice. These findings provide new insights into the immunotherapeutic role of RG-II in terms of its effects in a murine model of asthma.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.593-604
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• 2011

This study examines potential growth and different perspectives on green-walls, which are being re-evaluated recently. The aim is to identify the viewer preferences concerning the walls by collecting a wide spectrum of information to create an interior design related comprehensive and intellectual database. Also based on this proposition, choosing a green surface of indoor wall as a specific example stimulus, identifying a relationship betweeationsviewer's preference factors. The relationship will formulate detailed and absolute qualities, which will reach potential areas that the green walls can be widely applied in. As a result of a factor analysis, the viewers classified into the 3 factors as is pleasant, gorgeous and rich about the stimulus. Preferred key factors, which are closely related to emotional image language, were; cool, tidy, comfortable and beautiful. The common factors in preferred design stimulus, in order of importance are color>elements>image/form/plants. Specific levels of design factors according to relevance are contrast>furniture> modern>central/creeper foliage plants. In the meantime, this study is leading the process of quantitative measurement of green-walls to a new design direction and it is critical to consistently experimenting to back up the theory with solid evidence.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.151-164
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• 2008

Objective: To investigate the effects of Yeongdamsagantang (YDGT) on apoptosis of neuronal cells that can result in dementia. Method: The water extract of the YDGT was tested in vitro for its beneficial effects on neuronal survival and neuroprotective functions, particularly in connection with $A{\beta}$ oligomer-related dementias. $A{\beta}$ oligomers derived from proteolytic processing of the ${\beta}-amyloid$ precursor protein (APP), including the $amyloid-{\beta}$ peptide $(A{\beta})$, play a critical role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. A neuroblastoma cell line stably expressing an $A{\beta}$ oligomerassociated neuronal degeneration was used to investigate if YDGT inhibits formation of $A{\beta}$ oligomer. To measure the ATP generating level in mitochondrial membrane, luciferin/luciferase luminescence kit (Promega) and luminator was used, and to survey the protein's apparition, confocal microscopy was used. Result: $A{\beta}oligomer$ had a profound attenuation in the increase in CT105 expressing neuro2A cells from YDGT. Experimental evidence indicates that YDGT protected against neuronal damage from cells, but its cellular and molecular mechanisms remain unknown. We demonstrated that YDGT inhibited formation of $amyloid-{\beta}$ $(A{\beta})$ oligomers, which were the behavior, and possibly causative, features of AD. The decreased $A{\beta}$ oligomer in the presence of YDGT was observed in the conditioned medium of this $A{\beta}oligomer-secreting$ cell line under in vitro. In the cells, YDGT significantly attenuated mitochondrion-initiated apoptosis. Conclusion: (i) a direct $A{\beta}$ oligomer toxicity and the apoptosis initiated by the mitochondria; and (ii) multiple cellular and molecular neuroprotective mechanisms, including attenuation of apoptosis and direct inhibition of $A{\beta}$ oligomer aggregation, underlie the neuroprotective effects of YDGT.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.495-499
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• 2005

Purpose : Interleukin-4(IL-4) is a critical component of the Th2 cytokine pathway and contributes to severity of respiratory syncytial virus(RSV) bronchiolitis. Previous studies observed an association between severe RSV bronchiolitis in Korean children with a common haplotype of the IL4 promoter. This study was performed to investigate functional differences of the variant IL4 promoter haplotypes. Methods : Genomic DNA was obtained from 20 children from 6 to 48 months of age in the Department of Pediatrics, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. The IL4 promoter spanning an 1.2 kb region was amplified and haplotype was determined by cloning and the PHASE reconstruction. Transcriptional activity of Jurkat T cells which were transfected with each IL4 haplotype were analyzed by use of luciferase assay. Results : Three haplotypes of the IL4 promoter have been identified with the frequency of GCC(7 percent), TCC(17 percent), and TTT(76 percent). The TTT haplotype demonstrated the highest luciferase values in both unstimulated and PMA-stimulated Jurkat T cells. Increases in transcriptional activity compared to GCC have been shown in TTT(5.3 fold higher) followed by TCC(4.2 fold higher) in unstimulated Jurkat T cells. Conclusion : We provided evidence that increased transcriptional activity of the TTT haplotype of the IL4 promoter, which has previously been over-represented in Korean children with severe RSV bronchiolitis. Therefore, IL-4 could play a potential role in the pathogenesis of RSV infection, possibly via an altered transcriptional activity of the different IL4 haplotypes.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.51-58
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• 2013

Purpose - Nowadays, more than ever before, fierce competition, deep market segmentation, short product life cycles, and intensifying customer needs are putting increasing pressure on franchise's organizations to satisfy their customers by creating market-oriented relationships with and enhancing their market knowledge of them. One way that this might be achieved is by establishing deep ties (i.e., job commitment and job satisfaction) with their employees. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how two important constructs of franchises' strategic efforts, LO (learning orientation) and RMO (relationship marketing orientation), affect job satisfaction, given the mediating role of job commitment. A franchise system comprises a set of contractual arrangements by which mutual obligations are performed. An organizational learning goal motivates employees to improve their abilities and master the tasks they perform. Relationship marketing, in addition, is to identify, establish, maintain, and enhance relationships with customers and other stakeholders to ensure that the objectives of all parties are met and this is done through the mutual exchange of promises. In a relationship marketing orientation, then, a firm creates, maintains, and enhances a strong relationship with its customers by sustaining long-term ties. This study was designed to examine the evolution of various theoretical approaches to franchise systems in order to determine whether theories about firms have significantly affected the franchise system. To this end, the authors developed a structural model consisting of several constructs. Previous studies have suggested that franchises' learning and relationship marketing orientations are important occupational immersion dimensions driving job satisfaction. Research design, data, methodology - We empirically tested a process of how the learning orientation and the relationship marketing orientation influence job commitment and job satisfaction using survey data drawn from 150 responding franchisees who were interviewed about their individual tendencies. Results - The results of this study provide empirical evidence that learning orientation, relationship marketing orientation, and job commitment all influence franchisees' job satisfaction. The results of this study indicate that, first, learning orientation had a significant effect on job satisfaction; second, relationship marketing orientation was positively related to job commitment; third, job commitment had a significant effect on job satisfaction. We also found that relationship marketing orientation and job satisfaction were mediated by job commitment. Conclusions - The findings of this study confirm the importance of learning orientation and relationship marketing orientation in maintaining a positive marketing relationship between franchiser and franchisee from to the perspective of the market. This indicates that franchiser support such as educational programs provided by the franchiser will help franchisees attain higher business management achievement and satisfaction. Moreover, a positive relationship between franchisees and consumers can be maintained through tie effects. Our findings also suggest that learning orientation plays a critical role in job satisfaction within the franchise system.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.313-318
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• 2009

TIAF1 is a TGF-${\beta}$1-induced anti-apoptotic factor that plays a critical role in blocking TNF (tumor necrosis factor) cytotoxicity in mouse fibroblasts and participates in TGF-${\beta}$-mediated growth regulation. In this study, we obtained the full-length cDNA sequence of the porcine TIAF1 gene. Real-time PCR further revealed that the TIAF1 gene was expressed at the highest level in liver and kidney with prominent expressions detected in uterus, and lower levels detected in heart, spleen, lung, stomach, small intestine, skeletal muscle and fat of Large White pigs. Sequence analysis indicated that a 6 base-pair deletion mutation existed in the exon of the TIAF1 gene between Meishan and Large White pigs. This mutation induced deletion of Gln and Val amino acids. PCR-RFLP was used to detect the polymorphism in 394 pigs of a "Large White${\times}$Meishan" $F_{2}$ resource population and four purebred pig populations. The frequencies of the A allele (with a 6 bp deletion) were dominant in Chinese Meishan and Bamei pigs, and the frequencies of the B allele (no 6 bp deletion) were dominant in Large White and Landrace pigs. Association analyses revealed that the deletion mutation had highly significant associations (p<0.01) with meat marbling score of the thorax-waist longissimus dorsi (LD) muscle (MM1) and intramuscular fat percentage (IMF), and significant associations (p<0.05) with carcass length (CL). The results presented here supply evidence that the 6 bp deletion mutation in the TIAF1 gene affects porcine meat quality and provides useful information for further porcine breeding.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.33-75
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• 2011

The ownership structure of a franchise system is determined by the franchisor's strategic choice. A close look at the extant theories and perspectives in economics and management such as resource scarcity theory, agency theory, transaction cost analysis, and mixed ownership theory reveals that firms choose their ownership structure for the sake of economic efficiency, profit potentials, the chance of survival, and other strategic concerns. The present study, on the basis of strategic choice perspective, reviews the divergent theories of a franchise system's ownership structure and its determinants, thus providing a theoretical framework for comparing the contradictory arguments along the several critical dimensions. We also developed and tested the conflicting hypotheses regarding key determinants of ownership structure including firm's age, size, transaction-specific investments, uncertainty, and risk-sharing propensity. Using a FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document) data set of 543 Korean franchisors, we found that the years in business, the total number of employees, days of training, the inverse of the years of franchising, and the requirement of royalty payment have positive relationships with the proportion of company-owned outlets to total number of outlets. On the other hand, the proportion of company-owned outlets was found to have negative relationships with the total number of outlets and the extent of geographic dispersion of outlets, but to have no significant relationships with the initial investment required and the inverse of contract length. Based on the findings, we provide several theoretical and managerial implications for studying ownership structure of franchise systems.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-160
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• 2018

The present article reviews recent arguments on the moral-conventional distinction in moral judgment and discusses the implications for moral psychology research. Traditional research on moral judgment has considered both the evaluation of transgressive actions of others and the categorization of the norms on the moral-conventional dimension. Kohlberg, Piaget, and Turiel (1983) regard moral principles to be clearly distinguished from social-conventional norms and suggested criteria for the moral-conventional distinction. They assume that the moral domain should be specifically related to the value of care and justice, and the judgment for the moral transgression should be universal and objective. The cognitive developmental approach or social domain theory, which has been generally accepted by moral psychology researchers, is recently being challenged. In this article, we introduce three different approaches that criticize the assumptions for the moral-conventional distinction, namely, moral sentimentalism, moral parochialism, and moral pluralism. Moral sentimentalism emphasizes the role of emotion in moral judgment and suggests that moral and conventional norms can be continuously distributed on an affective-nonaffective dimension. Moral parochialism, based on the evidence from anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, asserts that norm transgression can be the object of moral judgment only when the action is relevant to the survival and reproduction of a group and the individuals within the group; judgment for moral transgression can be as relative as that for conventional transgression. Moral pluralism suggests multiple moral intuitions that vary with culture and individual, and questions the assumption of the social domain theory that morality is confined to care and justice. These new perspectives imply that the moral-conventional distinction may not properly tap into the nature of moral judgment and that further research is needed.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.45-69
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• 2009

Today, SCM is used as a important tool of management innovation for enterprise's survival and development. BSC forces managers to focus on balanced measures of business performance that are most critical. The purpose of this study is to find out the determinants of SCM adoption through the analysis which examine the relationship among the key success factors, and business performance using the BSC perspective. This study also gives the suggestion for the effective SCM implementation in the korean companies. This study has been conducted using the data collected from 107 companies implementing SCM. By analyses of the questionnaires, empirical results shows that the implementation of SCM has positive effect on organizational performance with 4 perspectives of BSC. The contribution of this study is that it provides a conceptual framework and empirical evidence of the causal relationship between key success factors, and business performance with 4 perspectives of BSC concept. This study showed that more consideration are essential to obtain balanced business performance for companies with SCM adoption plan.