Background : The p53 gene codes for a DNA-binding nuclear phosphoprotein that appears to inhibit the progression of cells from the G1 to the S phase of the cell cycle. Mutations of the p53 gene are common in a wide variety of human cancers, including lung cancer. In lung cancers, point mutations of the p53 gene have been found in all histological types including approximately 45% of resected NSCLC and even more frequently in SCLC specimens. Mutant forms of the p53 protein have transforming activity and interfere with the cell-cycle regulatory function of the wild-type protein. The majority of p53 gene mutations produce proteins with altered conformation and prolonged half life; these mutant proteins accumulate in the cell nucleus and can be detected by immunohistochemical staining. But protein overexpression has been reported in the absence of mutation. p53 protein overexpression or gene mutation is reported poor prognostic factor in breast cancer, but in lung cancer, its prognostic significance is controversial. Method : We investigated the p53 abnormalities by nucleotide sequencing, polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism(PCR-SSCP), and immunohistochemical staining. We correlated these results with each other and survival in 75 patients with NSCLC resected with curative intent. Overexpression of the p53 protein was studied immunohistochemically in archival paraffin- embedded tumor samples using the D07(Novocastra, U.K.) antibody. Overexpression of p53 protein was defined by the nuclear staining of greater than 25% immunopositive cells in tumors. Detection of p53 gene mutation was done by PCR-SSCP and nucleotide sequencing from the exon 5-9 of p53 gene. Result: 1) Of the 75 patients, 36%(27/75) showed p53 overexpression by immunohistochemical stain. There was no survival difference between positive and negative p53 immunostaining(overall median survival of 26 months, disease free median survival of 13 months in both groups). 2) By PCR-SSCP, 27.6%(16/58) of the patients showed mobility shift. There was no significant difference in survival according to mobility shift(overall median survival of 27 in patients without mobility shift vs 20 months in patients with mobility shift, disease free median survival of 8 months vs 10 months respectively). 3) Nucleotide sequence was analysed from 29 patients, and 34.5%(10/29) had mutant p53 sequence. Patients with the presence of gene mutations showed tendency to shortened survival compared with the patients with no mutation(overall median survival of 22 vs 27 months, disease free median survival of 10 vs 20 months), but there was no statistical significance. 4) The sensitivity and specificity of immunostain based on PCR-SSCP was 67.0%, 74.0%, and that of the PCR-SSCP based on the nucleotide sequencing was 91.8%, 96.2% respectively. The concordance rate between the immunostain and PCR-SSCP was 62.5%, and the rate between the PCR-SSCP and nucleotide sequencing was 95.3%. Conclusion : In terms of detection of p53 gene mutation, PCR-SSCP was superior to immunostaining. p53 gene abnormalities either overexpression or mutation were not a significant prognostic factor in NSCLC patients resected with curative intent. However, patients with the mutated p53 gene showed the trends of early relapse.
Purpose: To investigate the effects of radiation dose-escalation on the treatment outcome, complications and the other prognostic variables for glioblastoma patients treated with 3D-conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT). Materials and Methods: Between Jan 1997 and July 2002, a total of 75 patients with histologically proven diagnosis of glioblastoma were analyzed. The patients who had a Karnofsky Performance Score (KPS) of 60 or higher, and received at least 50 Gy of radiation to the tumor bed were eligible. All the patients were divided into two arms; Arm 1, the high-dose group was enrolled prospectively, and Arm 2, the low-dose group served as a retrospective control. Arm 1 patients received
I am working on a series of Korean linguistic studies targeting Ganchal(old typed letters in Korea) for many years and this study is for the typology of the [Safety Expression] as the part. For this purpose, [Safety Expression] were divided into a formal types and semantic types, targeting the Chinese Ganchal and Hangul Ganchal of modern Korean Language time(16th century-19th century). Formal types can be divided based on whether Normal position or not, whether Omission or not, whether the Sending letter or not, whether the relationship of the high and the low or not. Normal position form and completion were made the first type which reveal well the typicality of the [Safety Expression]. Original position while [Own Safety] omitted as the second type, while Original position while [Opposite Safety] omitted as the third type, Original position while [Safety Expression] omitted as the fourth type. Inversion type were made as the fifth type which is the most severe solecism in [Safety Expression]. The first type is refers to Original position type that [Opposite Safety] precede the [Own Safety] and the completion type that is full of semantic element. This type can be referred to most typical and normative in that it equipped all components of [Safety Expression]. A second type is that [Safety Expression] is composed of only the [Opposite Safety]. This type is inferior to the first type in terms of set pattern, it is never outdone when it comes to the appearance frequency. Because asking [Opposite Safety] faithfully, omitting [Own Safety] dose not greatly deviate politeness and easy to write Ganchal, it is utilized. The third type is the Original position type showing the configuration of the [Opposite Safety]+Own Safety], but [Opposite Safety] is omitted. The fourth type is a Original position type showing configuration of the [Opposite Safety+Own Safety], but [Safety Expression] is omitted. This type is divided into A ; [Safety Expression] is entirely omitted and B ; such as 'saving trouble', the conventional expression, replace [Safety Expression]. The fifth type is inversion type that shown to structure of the [Own Safety+Opposite Safety], unlike the Original position type. This type is the most severe solecism type and real example is very rare. It is because let leading [Own Safety] and ask later [Opposite Safety] for face save is offend against common decency. In addition, it can be divided into the direct type that [Opposite Safety] and [Own Safety] is directly connected and indirect type that separate into the [story]. The semantic types of [Safety Expression] can be classified based on whether Sending letter or not, fast or slow, whether intimate or not, and isolation or not. For Sending letter, [Safety Expression] consists [Opposite Safety(Climate+Inquiry after health+Mental state)+Own safety(status+Inquiry after health+Mental state)]. At [Opposite safety], [Climate] could be subdivided as [Season] information and [Climate(weather)] information. Also, [Mental state] is divided as receiver's [Family Safety Mental state] and [Individual Safety Mental state]. In [Own Safety], [Status] is divided as receiver's traditional situation; [Recent condition] and receiver's ongoing situation; [Present condition]. [Inquiry after health] is also subdivided as receiver's [Family Safety] and [Individual Safety], [Safety] is as [Family Safety] and [Individual Safety]. Likewise, [Inquiry after health] or [Safety] is usually used as pairs, in dimension of [Family] and [Individual]. This phenomenon seems to have occurred from a big family system, which is defined as taking care of one's parents or grand parents. As for the Written Reply, [Safety Expression] consists [Opposite Safety (Reception+Inquiry after health+Mental state)+Own safety(status+Inquiry after health+Mental state)], and only in [Opposite safety], a difference in semantic structure happens with Sending letter. In [Opposite Safety], [Reception] is divided as [Letter] which is Ganchal that is directly received and [Message], which is news that is received indirectly from people. [Safety] is as [Family Safety] and [Individual Safety], [Mental state] also as [Family Safety Mental state] and [Individual Safety Mental state].
As business incubation centers (BICs) have been operating for more than 10 years in Korea, many early stage startups tend to use the services provided by the incubating centers. BICs in Korea have accumulated the knowledge and experience in the past ten years and their services have been considerably improved. The business incubating service has three facets : (1) business infrastructure service, (2) direct service, and (3) indirect service. The mission of BICs is to provide the early stage entrepreneurs with the incubating service in a limited period time to help them grow strong enough to survive the fierce competition after graduating from the incubation. However, the incubating services sometimes fail to foster the independence of new startup companies, and raise the dependence of many companies on BICs. Thus, the dependence on BICs is a very important factor to understand the survival of the incubated startup companies after graduation from BICs. The purpose of this study is to identify the main factors that influence the firm's dependence on BICs and to characterize the relationships among the identified factors. The business incubating service is a core construct of this study. It includes various activities and resources, such as offering the physical facilities, legal service, and connecting them with outside organizations. These services are extensive and take various forms. They are provided by BICs directly or indirectly. Past studies have identified various incubating services and classify them in different ways. Based on the past studies, we classify the business incubating service into three categories as mentioned above : (1) business infrastructure support, (2) direct support, and (3) networking support. The business infrastructure support is to provide the essential resources to start the business, such as physical facilities. The direct support is to offer the business resources available in the BICs, such as human, technical, and administrational resources. Finally, the indirect service was to support the resource in the outside of business incubation center. Dependence is generally defined as the degree to which a client firm needs the resources provided by the service provider in order to achieve its goals. Dependence is generated when a firm recognizes the benefits of interacting with its counterpart. Hence, the more positive outcomes a firm derives from its relationship with the partner, the more dependent on the partner the firm must inevitably become. In business incubating, as a resident firm is incubated in longer period, we can predict that her dependence on BICs would be stronger. In order to foster the independence of the incubated firms, BICs have to be able to manipulate the provision of their services to control the firms' dependence on BICs. Based on the above discussion, the research model for relationships between dependence and its affecting factors was developed. We surveyed the companies residing in BICs to test our research model. The instrument of our study was modified, in part, on the basis of previous relevant studies. For the purposes of testing reliability and validity, preliminary testing was conducted with firms that were residing in BICs and incubated by the BICs in the region of Gwangju and Jeonnam. The questionnaire was modified in accordance with the pre-test feedback. We mailed to all of the firms that had been incubated by the BICs with the help of business incubating managers of each BIC. The survey was conducted over a three week period. Gifts (of approximately ₩10,000 value) were offered to all actively participating respondents. The incubating period was reported by the business incubating managers, and it was transformed using natural logarithms. A total of 180 firms participated in the survey. However, we excluded 4 cases due to a lack of consistency using reversed items in the answers of the companies, and 176 cases were used for the analysis. We acknowledge that 176 samples may not be sufficient to conduct regression analyses with 5 research variables in our study. Each variable was measured through multiple items. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis to assess their unidimensionality. In an effort to test the construct validity of the instruments, a principal component factor analysis was conducted with Varimax rotation. The items correspond well to each singular factor, demonstrating a high degree of convergent validity. As the factor loadings for a variable (or factor) are higher than the factor loadings for the other variables, the instrument's discriminant validity is shown to be clear. Each factor was extracted as expected, which explained 70.97, 66.321, and 52.97 percent, respectively, of the total variance each with eigen values greater than 1.000. The internal consistency reliability of the variables was evaluated by computing Cronbach's alphas. The Cronbach's alpha values of the variables, which ranged from 0.717 to 0.950, were all securely over 0.700, which is satisfactory. The reliability and validity of the research variables are all, therefore, considered acceptable. The effects of dependence were assessed using a regression analysis. The Pearson correlations were calculated for the variables, measured by interval or ratio scales. Potential multicollinearity among the antecedents was evaluated prior to the multiple regression analysis, as some of the variables were significantly correlated with others (e.g., direct service and indirect service). Although several variables show the evidence of significant correlations, their tolerance values range between 0.334 and 0.613, thereby demonstrating that multicollinearity is not a likely threat to the parameter estimates. Checking some basic assumptions for the regression analyses, we decided to conduct multiple regression analyses and moderated regression analyses to test the given hypotheses. The results of the regression analyses indicate that the regression model is significant at p < 0.001 (F = 44.260), and that the predictors of the research model explain 42.6 percent of the total variance. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 address the relationships between the dependence of the incubated firms and the business incubating services. Business infrastructure service, direct service, and indirect service are all significantly related with dependence (β = 0.300, p < 0.001; β = 0.230, p < 0.001; β = 0.226, p < 0.001), thus supporting Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3. When the incubating period is the moderator and dependence is the dependent variable, the addition of the interaction terms with the antecedents to the regression equation yielded a significant increase in R2 (F change = 2.789, p < 0.05). In particular, direct service and indirect service exert different effects on dependence. Hence, the results support Hypotheses 5 and 6. This study provides several strategies and specific calls to action for BICs, based on our empirical findings. Business infrastructure service has more effect on the firm's dependence than the other two services. The introduction of an additional high charge rate for a graduated but allowed to stay in the BIC is a basic and legitimate condition for the BIC to control the firm's dependence. We detected the differential effects of direct and indirect services on the firm's dependence. The firms with long incubating period are more sensitive to indirect service positively, and more sensitive to direct service negatively, when assessing their levels of dependence. This implies that BICs must develop a strategy on the basis of a firm's incubating period. Last but not least, it would be valuable to discover other important variables that influence the firm's dependence in the future studies. Moreover, future studies to explain the independence of startup companies in BICs would also be valuable.
With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.
The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.