• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.53-82
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to show the clustering trend and compare empirical results, as well as to choose the clustering ports for 3 Korean ports (Busan, Incheon, and Gwangyang) by using meta-frontier DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and integer models on 38 Asian container ports over the period 2005-2014. The models consider 4 input variables (birth length, depth, total area, and number of cranes) and 1 output variable (container TEU). The main empirical results of the study are as follows. First, the meta-frontier DEA for Chinese seaports identifies as most efficient ports (in decreasing order) Shanghai, Hongkong, Ningbo, Qingdao, and Guangzhou, while efficient Korean seaports are Busan, Incheon, and Gwangyang. Second, the clustering results of the integer model show that the Busan port should cluster with Dubai, Hongkong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, Singapore, and Kaosiung, while Incheon and Gwangyang should cluster with Shahid Rajaee, Haifa, Khor Fakkan, Tanjung Perak, Osaka, Keelong, and Bangkok ports. Third, clustering through the integer model sharply increases the group efficiency of Incheon (401.84%) and Gwangyang (354.25%), but not that of the Busan port. Fourth, the efficiency ranking comparison between the two models before and after the clustering using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test is matched with the average level of group efficiency (57.88 %) and the technology gap ratio (80.93%). The policy implication of this study is that Korean port policy planners should employ meta-frontier DEA, as well as integer models when clustering is needed among Asian container ports for enhancing the efficiency. In addition Korean seaport managers and port authorities should introduce port development and management plans accounting for the reference and clustered seaports after careful analysis.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.493-513
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• 2014

With the development of related technologies, Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing fast and being used in many ways. Past LBS studies have focused on adoption of LBS because of the fact that LBS users have privacy concerns regarding revealing their location information. Meanwhile, the number of LBS users and revenues from LBS are growing rapidly because users can get some benefits by revealing their location information. Little research has been done on how LBS affects consumers' information search behavior in product purchase. The purpose of this paper is examining the effect of LBS information filtering on buyers' uncertainty and their information search behavior. When consumers purchase a product, they try to reduce uncertainty by searching information. Generally, there are two types of uncertainties - knowledge uncertainty and choice uncertainty. Knowledge uncertainty refers to the lack of information on what kinds of alternatives are available in the market and/or their important attributes. Therefore, consumers having knowledge uncertainty will have difficulties in identifying what alternatives exist in the market to fulfil their needs. Choice uncertainty refers to the lack of information about consumers' own preferences and which alternative will fit in their needs. Therefore, consumers with choice uncertainty have difficulties selecting best product among available alternatives.. According to economics of information theory, consumers narrow the scope of information search when knowledge uncertainty is high. It is because consumers' information search cost is high when their knowledge uncertainty is high. If people do not know available alternatives and their attributes, it takes time and cognitive efforts for them to acquire information about available alternatives. Therefore, they will reduce search breadth. For people with high knowledge uncertainty, the information about products and their attributes is new and of high value for them. Therefore, they will conduct searches more in-depth because they have incentive to acquire more information. When people have high choice uncertainty, people tend to search information about more alternatives. It is because increased search breadth will improve their chances to find better alternative for them. On the other hand, since human's cognitive capacity is limited, the increased search breadth (more alternatives) will reduce the depth of information search for each alternative. Consumers with high choice uncertainty will spend less time and effort for each alternative because considering more alternatives will increase their utility. LBS provides users with the capability to screen alternatives based on the distance from them, which reduces information search costs. Therefore, it is expected that LBS will help users consider more alternatives even when they have high knowledge uncertainty. LBS provides distance information, which helps users choose alternatives appropriate for them. Therefore, users will perceive lower choice uncertainty when they use LBS. In order to test the hypotheses, we selected 80 students and assigned them to one of the two experiment groups. One group was asked to use LBS to search surrounding restaurants and the other group was asked to not use LBS to search nearby restaurants. The experimental tasks and measures items were validated in a pilot experiment. The final measurement items are shown in Appendix A. Each subject was asked to read one of the two scenarios - with or without LBS - and use a smartphone application to pick a restaurant. All behaviors on smartphone were recorded using a recording application. Search breadth was measured by the number of restaurants clicked by each subject. Search depths was measured by two metrics - the average number of sub-level pages each subject visited and the average time spent on each restaurant. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS and PLS. The results show that knowledge uncertainty reduces search breadth (H1a). However, there was no significant correlation between knowledge uncertainty and search depth (H1b). Choice uncertainty significantly reduces search depth (H2b), but no significant relationship was found between choice uncertainty and search breadth (H2a). LBS information filtering significantly reduces the buyers' choice uncertainty (H4) and reduces the negative relationship between knowledge uncertainty and search breadth (H3). This research provides some important implications for service providers. Service providers should use different strategies based on their service properties. For those service providers who are not well-known to consumers (high knowledge uncertainty) should encourage their customers to use LBS. This is because LBS would increase buyers' consideration sets when the knowledge uncertainty is high. Therefore, less known services have chances to be included in consumers' consideration sets with LBS. On the other hand, LBS information filtering decrease choice uncertainty and the near service providers are more likely to be selected than without LBS. Hence, service providers should analyze geographically approximate competitors' strength and try to reduce the gap so that they can have chances to be included in the consideration set.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.70-75
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• 2017

Purpose Radioactive iodine thyroid uptake (RAIU) rate is an examination which determines and seeks about general functions of thyroid gland. The size of thyroid gland is normally different between each person, also patients having thyroid diseases have had a variety of size of thyroid gland compared with others. The purpose of this study will investigate about the counting rate which is effected by the geometric factors through the length and volume changes of the source in RAIU rate. Materials and Methods I-131 185 kBq ($5{\mu}Ci$) were placed in a cylindrical phantom of 0.5 cm, 1 cm, 1.5 cm, and 3 cm in diameter, respectively, and saline was added to gradually increase the length by 1 cm in the horizontal and vertical directions to give a change in volume. The source was measured 20 times for 20 seconds from a distance of 25 cm to $364.4keV{\pm}20%$ energy ROI with Captus 3000 thyroid uptake system (Capintec, NJ, USA). Results When the source was located in the transverse direction of the detector, the consequence of one-way ANOVA is that even though the length of source is increased each diameter, there is mostly no significant difference. When the source was located in the longitudinal direction and the counting rate of length 1 cm at all diameter is set to 100%, the average is 92.57% for length 2 cm, 86.1% for 3 cm, 80.69% for 4 cm, 74.82% for 5 cm, and 69.68% at 6 cm. Conclusion According to this study, it is expected that the gap of RAIU rate has been depended on the thickness of thyroid gland as well as the diameter of the beaker. We know that the change of the volume with the increase of the length of the source had less effect on the change of the counting rate. Thus, in order to reduce the error in the measurement of the counting rate with the thyroid uptake rate equipment, an accurate counting rate can be relatively measured if the counting rate which is measured is corrected by thickness or the distance between the thyroid and the thyroid uptake rate equipment is changed.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.5_1
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• pp.665-679
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• 2019

Mesoscale soil moisture measurement from the promising Cosmic-Ray Neutron Probe (CRNP) is expected to bridge the gap between large scale microwave remote sensing and point-based in-situ soil moisture observations. Traditional calibration based on $N_0$ method is used to convert neutron intensity measured at the CRNP to field scale soil moisture. However, the static calibration parameter $N_0$ used in traditional technique is insufficient to quantify long term soil moisture variation and easily influenced by different time-variant factors, contributing to the high uncertainties in CRNP soil moisture product. Consequently, in this study, we proposed a modified traditional calibration method, so-called Dynamic-$N_0$ method, which take into account the temporal variation of $N_0$ to improve the CRNP based soil moisture estimation. In particular, a nonlinear regression method has been developed to directly estimate the time series of $N_0$ data from the corrected neutron intensity. The $N_0$ time series were then reapplied to generate the soil moisture. We evaluated the performance of Dynamic-$N_0$ method for soil moisture estimation compared with the traditional one by using a weighted in-situ soil moisture product. The results indicated that Dynamic-$N_0$ method outperformed the traditional calibration technique, where correlation coefficient increased from 0.70 to 0.72 and RMSE and bias reduced from 0.036 to 0.026 and -0.006 to $-0.001m^3m^{-3}$. Superior performance of the Dynamic-$N_0$ calibration method revealed that the temporal variability of $N_0$ was caused by hydrogen pools surrounding the CRNP. Although several uncertainty sources contributed to the variation of $N_0$ were not fully identified, this proposed calibration method gave a new insight to improve field scale soil moisture estimation from the CRNP.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.361-404
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• 2023

This study utilized a cross-temporal meta-analysis to explore shifts in self-efficacy levels among Korean college students from 1999 to 2022. We expected that increases in authoritative parenting styles, narcissism levels among students, and individualism in Korea might have positively influenced the self-efficacy of college students over the years. Conversely, growing economic disparities, decreasing class mobility, and the increasing instability of job markets might have had negative effects on self-efficacy. To investigate this, we analyzed 293 self-efficacy studies involving Korean college students published between 1999 and 2022, encompassing a total of 88,904 participants. Our criteria included studies that used the three most prevalent self-efficacy scales in Korea, focused solely on Korean college students, were cross-sectional with a one-time self-efficacy measurement, and provided essential statistics for our analysis. The results indicated no significant change in the self-efficacy levels of Korean college students over the observed period from 1999 to 2022. Additionally, we examined correlations between self-efficacy and various social indicators from different time points (20, 15, 10, and 5 years prior, as well as the year of data collection). Findings revealed that both birth rate and consumer price fluctuation rate were consistently negatively correlated with self-efficacy, while gross national income was positively correlated. This study is the first to assess Korean college students' self-efficacy levels using a cross-temporal meta-analysis, offering foundational knowledge for implementing such analytical methods for subsequent research and providing an indirect assessment of the generational gap theory. Finally, the limitations of the study and the direction for future research were discussed.