• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.20-40
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• 2022

Purpose - In recent times, the international trade environment has been changing rapidly, centering on the online market. In the post-COVID-19 era, small and medium-sized trading companies are facing the problem of not being properly provided with overseas market research, market trend analysis, and trade-related information. Cloud-based digital trade is being sought as an alternative to solve these problems; however, there is a lack of research on the intention to switch to digital trade among small and medium-sized trading companies. Therefore, this study empirically analyzes the intention to switch to digital trade based on the migration theory, and through this, attempts to identify each factor that affects the intention to switch to digital trade. Design/methodology - In this study, in order to identify factors influencing intention to switch to digital trade and innovation resistance of small and medium-sized trading companies, through previous research on migration theory and the PPM (Push, Pull, Mooring) model, each variable was selected for the purpose of the study. Based on this, a research model was established for the factors affecting switching to digital trade of small and medium-sized trading companies and empirically analyzed. In addition, considering the differences in the innovation propensity and maturity of information infrastructure of trading companies as the recipients of innovation, this study analyzes the moderating effect of the mooring effect and seeks ways to establish specific strategies according to the degree. Findings - As a result of empirical analysis, the pull effect was found to have the greatest influence on intention to switch to digital trade. However, the pull factor was found to have an effect on user resistance, and it was confirmed that it was a factor simultaneously inducing positive and negative consumption behaviors among users. In addition, it was found that the higher the company's innovation propensity, the higher the pull effect's influence on the intention to switch, and analysis showed that the push effect had no influence. In addition, companies with high information infrastructure maturity were expected to have a relatively high level of intention to switch compared to companies with low information infrastructure maturity, and the difference between the two groups was found not to be statistically significant. Originality/value - This study is a timely study in that it demonstrated the effect on the switching to cloud-based digital trade for small and medium-sized trading companies and that the cloud system related to digital trade is in full swing. There are academic implications in that it revealed that the pull effect is an important factor in the intention to switch to cloud service. Practical implications were presented in that small and medium-sized trading companies suggested ways to increase the value of the cloud system for switching to digital trade and a way to increase the switching ratio by minimizing the mooring effect. In addition, the study argues that active institutional support from the government is needed to activate cloud service.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.4A
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• pp.707-717
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• 2006

As an alternative to conventional prestressed concrete (PSC) girders, various types of PSC girders are either under development or have already been applied in bridge structures. Incrementally prestressed concrete girder is one of these newly developed girders. According to the design concept, these new types of PSC girders have the advantages of requiring less self-weight while having the capability of longer spans. However, the dynamic interaction between bridge superstructures and passing trains is one of the critical issues concerning these railway bridges designed with more flexibility. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate modal parameters of newly designed bridges before doing dynamic analyses. In the present paper, a 25 meters long full scale PSC girder was fabricated as a test specimen and modal testing was carried out to evaluate modal parameters including natural frequencies and modal damping ratios at every prestressing stage. During the modal testing, a digitally controlled vibration exciter as well as an impact hammer is applied, in order to obtain precise frequency response functions and the modal parameters are evaluated varying with construction stages. Prestressed force effects on changes of modal parameters are analyzed at every incremental prestressing stage. With the application of reliable properties from modal experiments, estimation of dynamic performances of PSC girder railway bridges can be obtained from various parametric studies on dynamic behavior under the passage of moving train. Dynamic displacements, impact factor, acceleration of the slab, end rotation of the girder, and other important dynamic performance parameters are checked with various speeds of the train.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.4D
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• pp.369-376
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• 2010

At present, many problems in traffic operation and safety occurs since there is no clear design criteria on designating the not-permitted entrance/exit section at curb areas within complex areas. Even, there is no specific and detailed researches on the not-permitted entrance/exit section by now. This research calculated the proper length of the entrance/exit section at curb areas by dividing the access not-permitted section into the two sections. First, the calculation of the entrance section was done by considering the location of crosswalks, stop line clearance, the queue length of vehicles approaching to second lanes, and marginal distance for safety have been considered. Second, the calculation of the exit section was done by comparing and analyzing the distance between cars of the entrance section according to the investigation point and the distance considering the location of crosswalks, the behavior of exit vehicles and the length of vehicles. In conclusion, by presenting the proper length in consideration of the traffic operation and safety on the access not-permitted section within complex areas, it can be used as a traffic safety improvement alternative and will be contributed in establishing and operating the proper installation criteria for the access not-permitted section within complex areas.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2013

As advertising and promotions are categorized as operating expenses, managers tend to reduce marketing budget to improve their short term profitability. Gauging the value and accountability of marketing spending is therefore considered as a major research priority in marketing. To respond this call, recent studies have documented that financial market reacts positively to a firm's marketing activity or marketing related outcomes such as brand equity and customer satisfaction. However, prior studies focus on the relation of marketing variable and financial market variables. This study suggests a channel about how marketing activity increases firm valuation. Specifically, we propose that a firm's marketing activity increases the level of the firm's product market information and thereby the dispersion in financial analysts' earnings forecasts decreases. With less uncertainty about the firm's future prospect, the firm's managers and shareholders have less information asymmetry, which reduces the firm's cost of capital and thereby increases the valuation of the firm. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine how informational benefits can mediate the effect of marketing activity on firm value. To test whether marketing activity contributes to increase in firm value by mitigating information asymmetry, this study employs a longitudinal data which contains 12,824 firm-year observations with 2,337 distinct firms from 1981 to 2006. Firm value is measured by Tobin's Q and one-year-ahead buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR). Following prior literature, dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts is used as a proxy for the information gap between management and shareholders. For model specification, to identify mediating effect, the three-step regression approach is adopted. All models are estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. The analysis shows that marketing intensity has a significant negative relationship with dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts. After including the mediator variable about analyst dispersion, the effect of marketing intensity on firm value drops from 1.199 (p < .01) to 1.130 (p < .01) in Tobin's Q model and the same effect drops from .192 (p < .01) to .188 (p < .01) in BHAR model. The results suggest that analysts' forecast dispersion partially accounts for the positive effect of marketing on firm valuation. Additionally, the same analysis was conducted with an alternative dependent variable (forecast accuracy) and a marketing metric (advertising intensity). The analysis supports the robustness of the main results. In sum, the results provide empirical evidence that marketing activity can increase shareholder value by mitigating problem of information asymmetry in the capital market. The findings have important implications for managers. First, managers should be cognizant of the role of marketing activity in providing information to the financial market as well as to the consumer market. Thus, managers should take into account investors' reaction when they design marketing communication messages for reducing the cost of capital. Second, this study shows a channel on how marketing creates shareholder value and highlights the accountability of marketing. In addition to the direct impact of marketing on firm value, an indirect channel by reducing information asymmetry should be considered. Potentially, marketing managers can justify their spending from the perspective of increasing long-term shareholder value.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.381-397
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• 2023

The most representative design used in clinical trials is randomization, which is used to accurately estimate the treatment effect. However, comparison between the treatment group and the control group in an observational study without randomization is biased due to various unadjusted differences, such as characteristics between patients. Propensity score weighting is a widely used method to address these problems and to minimize bias by adjusting those confounding and assess treatment effects. Inverse probability weighting, the most popular method, assigns weights that are proportional to the inverse of the conditional probability of receiving a specific treatment assignment, given observed covariates. However, this method is often suffered by extreme propensity scores, resulting in biased estimates and excessive variance. Several alternative methods including trimming, overlap weights, and matching weights have been proposed to mitigate these issues. In this paper, we conduct a simulation study to compare performance of various propensity score weighting methods under diverse situation, such as limited overlap, misspecified propensity score, and treatment contrary to prediction. From the simulation results overlap weights and matching weights consistently outperform inverse probability weighting and trimming in terms of bias, root mean squared error and coverage probability.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.542-549
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• 2023

Since the growing interest in surrogate modeling, there has been continuous research aimed at simulating nonlinear chemical processes using data-driven machine learning. However, the opaque nature of machine learning models, which limits their interpretability, poses a challenge for their practical application in industry. Therefore, this study aims to analyze chemical processes using Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), a concept that improves interpretability while ensuring model accuracy. While conventional sensitivity analysis of chemical processes has been limited to calculating and ranking the sensitivity indices of variables, we propose a methodology that utilizes XAI to not only perform global and local sensitivity analysis, but also examine the interactions among variables to gain physical insights from the data. For the ammonia synthesis process, which is the target process of the case study, we set the temperature of the preheater leading to the first reactor and the split ratio of the cold shot to the three reactors as process variables. By integrating Matlab and Aspen Plus, we obtained data on ammonia production and the maximum temperatures of the three reactors while systematically varying the process variables. We then trained tree-based models and performed sensitivity analysis using the SHAP technique, one of the XAI methods, on the most accurate model. The global sensitivity analysis showed that the preheater temperature had the greatest effect, and the local sensitivity analysis provided insights for defining the ranges of process variables to improve productivity and prevent overheating. By constructing alternative models for chemical processes and using XAI for sensitivity analysis, this work contributes to providing both quantitative and qualitative feedback for process optimization.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2024

The global increase in population and subsequent scarcity of terrestrial living spaces necessitates exploration of alternative habitats. Research into the development of underwater living areas provides promising avenues for the expansion of human living spaces and the use of marine environments. This study focuses on the failure envelope of suction caisson foundations subjected to combined loads in a marine setting, utilizing finite element analysis. The foundation is assumed to be embedded in clay characterized by a linear increase in undrained shear strength with depth, employing the von Mises constitutive model for the clay. The resulting failure envelope is represented as a tilted ellipse which expands as the undrained shear strength increases, maintaining a constant ratio between the major and minor axes. A comparative analysis of two suction caisson foundations with varying length-to-diameter ratios revealed that this ratio influences the dimensions of the failure envelope, with a tendency for the major-to-minor axis ratio to increase as the length-to-diameter ratio increases. These findings are critical for the design of suction caisson foundations in offshore environments.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.409-415
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• 2015

For the design of Concrete-Filled Steel Tube(CFST) columns, the outside diameter D to the steel tube thickness t ratio(D/t ratio) is limited to prevent the local buckling of steel tubes. Each design code proposes the respective model to compute the maximum D/t ratio using the yield strength of steel $f_y$ or $f_y$ and the elastic modulus of steel E. Considering the uncertainty in $f_y$ and E, the reliability index ${beta}$ for the local buckling of a CFST section can be calculated by formulating the limit state function including the maximum D/t models. The resulted ${beta}$ depends on the maximum D/t model used for the reliability analysis. This variability in reliability analysis is due to ambiguity in choosing computational models and it is called as "modelling uncertainty." This uncertainty can be considered as "non-specificity" of an epistemic uncertainty and modelled by constructing possibility distribution functions. In this study, three different computation models for the maximum D/t ratio are used to conduct reliability analyses for the local buckling of a CFST section and the reliability index ${beta}$ will be computed respectively. The "non-specific ${beta}s$" will be modelled by possibility distribution function and a metric, degree of confirmation, is measured from the possibility distribution function. It is shown that the degree of confirmation increases when ${beta}$ decreases. Conclusively, a new set of reliability indices associated with a degree of confirmation is determined and it is allowed to decide reliability index for the local buckling of a CFST section with an acceptable confirmation level.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.7
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• pp.89-195
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• 1980

The advanced developing countries including Korea are assumed to have reached a developmental stage which necessitates them to formulate and implement a plan for a national information network. Most of the governments in the advanced developing countries are well aware of the necessity for such a plan and some of them have actually commenced their studies on the feasibility of a national network of their own hoping to achieve maximum utility of their limited information resources. Two urgent problems facing planners in the design of a national information network are identified. One is lack of an optimum organisational model to enable them to meet their own situations, and the other is lack of a guideline to help designers evaluate the alternative structures and models when they are available. In resolving these two problems, network planners in the advanced developing countries would benefit from the achievement of the objectives of the present study. The major objective is to elicit and describe common information needs, desires and value of the people using information, and other common factors which are responsible for the present information services in the advanced developing countries and which have implications for the basic structure of the national information network. The value of this study is to aid administrators in Korea and those in the other advanced developing countries who are responsible for making national policies and who are now beginning to recognise the need for information services with the planning of economic and social development so as to enable all the groups in the community to have access to the information which are essential for decision making, research work, studies and even for recreational reading. This recognition will hopefully give them a rational basis for formulating right policies on information services. The methodology utlised for collecting the required data in this study falls under the category of observation and largely consists of the two techniques: literature review and postal questionnaire. Background information on the individual advanced developing: countries was gathered from monographic and periodical literature. and country reports presented at the various international conferences were analysed for other relevant data. For most of the data needed for the present study, a questionnaire on 'Library and Information Services as They Are Available in the Selected Countries' was formulated. This questionnaire was designed to be completed without help, by an expert who was well informed of the library and information services in his or her country. The questionnaire was intended to look in details at what information services in the advanced developing countries were doing-whom they were serving, in what way, and how well and establish to what extent they were meeting the nation's information requirements. It was also intended to ascertain the respondents' ideas on possible future developments in information provision in their countries, that is, in the advanced devanced developing countries. The questionnaire was posted to a total of 63 natinal librarians, directors of national information centres and those of other major libraries or information centres in 21 selected countries. Complete usable responses were received from 34 persons in 14 countries. In order to identify common characteristics of the information needs and desires in the advanced developing countries and the present situation of the information services to meet them, and the requirements and constraints peculiar to those countries which bought to be considered in the design of a national information network for advanced developing countries, an individual report on the current status of information activities for each of the fourteen countries chosen for this study, was presented. The procedure used was to arrange the data acquired in the questionnaire responses and other sources, in the form of fifteen country reports to be summarised by cross-section characteristics later.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.250-257
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• 2015

Multi-leaf collimator (MLC) systems are frequently used to deliver photon-based radiation, and allow conformal shaping of treatment beams. Many proton beam centers currently make use of aperture and snout systems, which involve use of a snout to shape and focus the proton beam, a brass aperture to modify field shape, and an acrylic compensator to modulate depth. However, it needs a lot of time and cost of preparing treatment, therefore, we developed the manual MLC for solving this problem. This study was carried out with the intent of designing an MLC system as an alternative to an aperture block system. Radio-activation and dose due to primary proton beam leakage and the presence of secondary neutrons were taken into account during these iterations. Analytical calculations were used to study the effects of leaf material on activation. We have fabricated tray model for adoption with a wobbling snout ($30{\times}40cm^2$) system which used uniform scanning beam. We designed the manual MLC and tray and can reduce the cost and time for treatment. After leakage test of new tray, we upgrade the tray with brass and made the safety tool. First, we have tested the radio-activation with usually brass and new brass for new manual MLC. It shows similar behavior and decay trend. In addition, we have measured the leakage test of a gantry with new tray and MLC tray, while we exposed the high energy with full modulation process on film dosimetry. The radiation leakage is less than 1%. From these results, we have developed the design of the tray and upgrade for safety. Through the radio-activation behavior, we figure out the proton beam leakage level of safety, where there detects the secondary particle, including neutron. After developing new design of the tray, it will be able to reduce the time and cost of proton treatment. Finally, we have applied in clinic test with original brass aperture and manual MLC and calculated the gamma index, 99.74% between them.